Amacitia
by Sar'Kalu
Summary: HP:AUPostHogwarts. They learnt to kill before they learnt to live and it's left them in ruins, un-saveable and useless in the wake of their destruction. America is the land of the free, perhaps here they can find what they were looking for, unless it kills them first...
1. Beginning

**Title**

Amicitia

**Author**

Sar'Kalu

Summary

HP:AUPostHogwarts. ey learnt to kill before they learnt to live and it's left them in ruins, un-saveable and useless in the wake of their destruction. America is the land of the free, perhaps here they can find what they were looking for, unless it kills them first...

Disclaimer

_Harry Potter_ is the intellectual property of J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury, Warner Brothers, and their affiliates. _House M. D._ is the intellectual property of David Shore, Heel and Toe Productions and their affiliates.

Rating

MA15+: Trigger warnings for abuse, torture and suicide. Contains strong language, sexual references and themes.

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><p><span>Authors Note:<span>

This is more exploratory than anything else, there will be mistakes because I have no Beta reader and proof reading only finds so much. Let me know if I missed anything or if you think anything needs changing.

Regards, Sar'Kalu

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><p><span>As It Begins…<span>

They were on the road again. The trees blurring to green streaks as he pushed the pedal to the metal, his hands gripping the steering wheel tight as he swerves around a camper van, his green eyes brittle and angry. The sun was setting fast as he pulls out of the tiny town that had been their stop over for the night. Beside him, a red haired man with blue eyes grips the seat with white knuckles, his jaw tight as he refrains from screaming at the driver for his reckless behaviour. The woman in the backseat, however, had no such qualms.

"How could you, Harry?" She shrills, her brown, flyaway hair frizzy with stress and frustration while her normally brown eyes crackled with fury. "We were so close to being normal!"

The dark haired man, Harry, narrows his green eyes and stomps on the accelerator harder. It was the seventh time in as many months that they'd had to leave the area because of the dark haired man's paranoia. First in Washington D.C., and finally in Columbus, Ohio; each time because Harry has been unable to keep from freaking out and stabbing someone with a home made weapon. That wasn't to say that his companions were completely guiltless either.

Ron, the red head, had actually torched a building he said had been filled to the brim with dark magic and satanic items. Of course, that the building had housed the Mayor had only compounded the problem. While Hermione had a tendency to go for peoples weaknesses, shredding them with her wickedly sharp tongue and has actually sent several people into therapy because she's unearthed several long held secrets driving them from at least four towns and schools.

"I'm not sorry," Harry finally manages to say, his voice gruff. "Bitch had it coming."

"You fucking shanked her!" Ron barks, his annoyance overriding his desire to stay the hell out of this argument. "Where did you even learn to make a shank anyway?"

Harry shrugs, stomping on the brake as they hit traffic. "Fuck!"

Hermione rubs at her chest from where the rapid deceleration plus seat beat had equalled in bruised ribs and whiplash. "I'm choosing our next destination!"

"Not Portland!" Ron snaps, remembering how, upon arrival, he had nearly taken off the Police Chief's head with a sawn off shot gun that he kept on him at all times. Hidden in a secret pocket of his denim jacket, compressed into non-space. He was a quick draw; he'd nearly killed several people because of his paranoia, the Police Chief had simply been the latest in a long string.

"I was thinking Pennsylvania actually," Hermione snaps spitefully, glaring at her ex-boyfriend and best friend. "Or do you have a problem with Pennsylvania too, Ronald?!"

Ron grinds his teeth together, gripping the seat beneath him tightly so that he didn't spin around and punch her. Hermione meant well. She always had, but recently they had found themselves snapping and snarling at each other as frustration and anger over took them. It was like they were poison for each other, or heroin. Addictive but dangerous. Harry was the same. Not one of them could manage on their own yet the longer they spent together the more likely they were going to kill each other.

"No, Hermione, Pennsylvania is fine," Ron hisses cruelly, sliding an intense glare in Harry's direction, taking in his best mates tense profile. "How far are we from Pennsylvania, Harry? Think we can make it before Easter?"

Harry grunts, shrugging. "Probably."

"Don't be stupid, the Easter weekends in a week and a bit!" Hermione argues, knowing that Ron and Harry were liable to floor their rust bucket northwards and nearly kill all three of them in an attempt to prove her wrong. "I wanted to spend Easter in Time Square! You promised Harry!"

"Did I?" Harry growls, narrowing his eyes even further. "Such a shame that us going to a crowded place is liable to end up in a "terrorist attack"." Harry made finger quotes with his two forefingers, lifting them off the steering wheel. "Face it Hermione, we're fucking trashed mentally, emotionally and physically. You and Ron are both five pounds underweight and I'm closer to seven. We have nearly killed close to three dozen people with our paranoia over the past year, we're on the fucking FBI's watch list and it's only because of my political pull that we're not rotting away in some fucking psycho nut-house!"

Ron scowls, he hates being reminded that he wasn't mentally stable. He felt as though it made him a failure because everyone else back home was just fine. Hermione believes they just hid it better. Mind you, Neville and Ginny had also hit the road, disappearing into the wilds of New Zealand, unable to deal with loud noises, screaming children or the sight of anything more than picturesque mountains and fields. No one who had fought in the War had managed to escape unscathed. Not really. They all had scars, some were just more visible than others.

"We're not crazy," Ron grumbles. "We just have an extreme case of PTSD."

Harry rolls his eyes, pulling the car off the side of the road in a shower of gravel. Once they'd stopped moving, Harry turns to Ron and stared into the red haired man's eyes. "Of course we're not," Harry states, feeling oddly at peace surrounded by trees, the flashing of passing cars headlights like a hypnotic strobe light behind Ron's pale face. "We're damaged."

"And that's okay with you?" Ron asks, feeling the darkness pressing in on him. Memories of being trapped in a Death Eater dungeon creeping up on him. He doesn't say anything though, because while he loathes the dark and all the uncertainty it represented; Harry adores it. Hiding his face, his scars from sight and revelling in its quiet solitude. Unseen.

"No," Harry acknowledges. "But I'd rather face it head on than live in denial."

Hermione watches the two men carefully, this kind of mutual TLC could quickly turn into a vicious fight that would more often than not lay one or both of them up in bed for the next three days, nursing their wounds. It was so lucky that the three of them had agreed early on that magic was off limits; not for the least of which was because the sight of magical energy had a tendency to send them into panic attacks where their own magic would lash out. The last time that had happened half of Hogsmede had been rendered to splinters and was the catalyst for the British wizarding world kicking them out of the country and onto a plane to America.

"I know of a place," Hermione finally says.

"Not Philadelphia or New York, Hermione," Harry denies immediately. "Big towns are bad news for us. You know that."

Hermione pouts in reluctant acceptance. "What about near Philly then?"

"In some tiny, shitty town where it's gonna be like Hicksville, US of A?" Ron sneers.

"Well," Hermione stammers, looking a bit bewildered by Ron's snarky reply. "Yes, actually. I was thinking somewhere by the sea for you and near a park for when Harry needs to get lost for a bit."

Ron's mouth flaps for a bit, clearly trying to find something wrong with that idea. Harry shoots the red head an amused look and starts the car up again, pulling off the side of the road and narrowly missing a red pick up with two massive spotlights on the roof. Hermione smiles as Ron grumbles but otherwise seemed okay with the idea. Crossing his arms petulantly when Harry refuses to pull over at a diner for cheeseburgers.

"Dammit Harry," Ron whines. "Why couldn't we have stopped there?"

Harry shoots his brother-in-arms a dry look. "Probably because we've been there before and were banned for starting a riot."

"Wait, that was that place?" Ron asks, cocking his thumb behind him stunned.

Harry hums in agreement, pulling the car off onto a ramp that directed them towards Pennsylvania. It would take them maybe two, three days to get there driving as they were. Merging onto the freeway, Harry floors the car, his headlights flooding the bitumen road making the white lines glow dully in reflection. "We have hours to go, guys, you might as well get some rest."

"What about you Harry?" Hermione asks as she tugs her rucksack up onto the seat behind her and using it as a pillow. "When will you get some rest? I haven't seen you sleep in nearly forty-eight hours now."

Harry shrugs his shoulder nonchalantly. "Whoever wakes first, drives."

"Sounds good to me," Ron snorts. "So fucking happy to be leaving Ohio."

"Yeah, me too, Ron," Harry smirks. "See you on the other side."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Ron grumbles, resting his head against the window and trying to ignore that fuzzy, itchy feeling that he gets from the cars vibrations. "Race you to the finish, Hermione."

"Gonna beat you there, Ronnie," Hermione slurs, her eyes heavy and crusty with sleep.

Harry chuckles darkly as he listens to his friends fall into Morpheus' arms, their breaths evening out and smoothing into regular deep sighs. It would be three, maybe four, hours until either Hermione or Ron would wake screaming from nightmares or flashbacks. It was bad enough that they experienced terrors at night, but at least at night you got to wake up, fleeing from the terrors of the dark. It was when they were awake and had a flashback that things got really bad. It was hard to remember where they were, that they weren't locked up in some hell hole, waiting for their torturers to return.

Dodging a heavy truck bearing an oversized load, Harry nudges the car past two hundred mph, screaming past a cop car and loosing them in the night. Pulling off the freeway, Harry noses past a sign reading: _Philadelphia, 1046 miles_ as he crosses the border into West Virginia. There may be 'quicker' routes to take, but this was was prettier and had less traffic. Besides, it is hypnotic, driving in the dark. There is little to distract him from his task but the monotony manages to keep the dark thoughts of the past year and a bit at bay. At nearly twenty-three, Harry feels broken, damaged and beyond all hopes of repair. It shouldn't be like this. Not for them.

They should have been back home. Settling into their jobs after finishing their final year of Hogwarts and revelling in the adulation of their people. Not driving down a motorway in a shitty rust bucket of a car, the sides battered from too many close calls during their frequent flights from townships filled with people unwilling or unable to deal with three war-torn teens. They needed to find somewhere safe. Somewhere where they could hide out and just be themselves. Harry blinks rapidly, his eyes burning, as he thinks of all the things he'd one day like to do. Sleeping through the night without waking up screaming was high up on that list, as was being able to look someone dead in the eye and not feel the need to reach for a knife. Fuck but they were messed up!

Three hours later he was passing a sign reading: _Baltimore 507 miles, Next Right_, when Ron wakes with a terrified scream. Harry swears loudly as he jerks the car sideways, narrowly missing a Chevy with a broken taillight. "Fuck, Ron!" Harry barks, pulling over to the side of the road, gripping his chest as he tries to calm his racing heart.

Ron, still shaking with the after effects of a remembered cruciatus, lets out a muffled sob. "I'm sorry, Harry, I couldn't help it."

"Who was it this time?" Harry asks, calmer now but still rubbing his chest. "Malfoy?"

Ron shakes his head, his blue eyes haunted. "No, it was old red eyes himself."

"Fuck," Harry groans, knowing that Ron wouldn't be able to drive or do much else beyond drink himself into oblivion. Memories of Voldemort were by far the worst. Harry groans again, shoving the heavy door of his Riviera open and slamming it closed again as he steps out onto the shoulder of the road. No one knew of the three months they had spent at Malfoy manor under his gentle hands. How they had heard the Death Eaters drag in Luna and Ollivander from places unknown. Had heard them scream and plead and fucking _cry_ for help. For it to _stop,_ _please, no more!_

Thumping his hands on the black roof of the car had Hermione jerks awake inside and notices Ron in the front curled up and sobbing. The sound drove away Harry's memories while she let out her own groan, knowing that whatever nightmare Ron'd had was going to set them back a few days. Outside, Harry had pops the boot and by the rustling and clinking, was pulling out bottles of booze for them to drink. Sometimes, even though it was a bad habit to get into, there was nothing for it but to drink yourself into oblivion. In the front Ron was crying still, his shoulders shaking with quiet howls. Harry watches him, hands weighed down with Tennessee Jack.

Hermione lets out another hollow groan and rubbed her face, watching Harry pull the passenger side door open and shove a bottle of Tennessee black label into Ron's arms. "Harry," she calls, startling the green eyed man into looking over at her. "Chuck us the keys, I'll drive."

Harry nods, doing as she bid and climbed into the back where Hermione had set up a nest of blankets and rucksacks. Meanwhile, Hermione settles herself into the drivers seat and turns the car on, trying to ignore the way it sputtered to life. Like it was reluctantly dying, determined to hold out for one more hike across the States. She flicks the radio on, so as to create yet another disorientating background noise that hopefully would prevent any further nightmares. Ron was already halfway through the bottle of Jack's, leaning against the passenger side door drunkenly, tears rolling like waves from his eyes. Hermione pulls onto the road carefully. She is a much safer driver than Harry was, mainly because she hated the feeling of poor control that driving too fast gave her. It wouldn't take long for the boys to get rocked back to sleep, holding their bottles of shit whiskey like lifelines.

Sure enough, Hermione finds that her prediction was correct as she navigated Hagerstown's empty streets an hour into her driving shift. She stops long enough to fill the tank with gas, tipping the sleepy guy manning the register his ten percent and then pulls back out onto the main road, swearing at the truck that nearly clips the front of the car. Then it was down the highway that bordered Gallatin National Forest. Route 81 then took her through Harrisburg and then onto route 76 through Reading and Lancaster, before Harry wakes up howling, startling the still drunk Ron and sending Hermione down the side of the road and crunching against the side of a tall pine tree.

"Dammit," Hermione curses, backing the car up with the aid of Harry and Ron pushing the front, back up onto the road. Thankfully they were alone on the pre-dawn road as there would have been many a dumbfounded gaze at the suddenly repaired Buick where there had been a messy wreck before.

"Here, I'm not gonna sleep again tonight," Harry says tiredly, dark circles underlining his eyes. "Give us the keys and you catch some z's."

"Sounds good to me," Hermione agrees, she'd been driving for nearly six hours now. Which was a record for Harry to sleep without 'aid'. Aid which usually constituted drinking himself into a stupor and waking up screaming, as they all did, seven or eight hours later. Dreamless sleep no longer works for them anymore, and the last time Ron had fallen into a coma thanks to a severe concussion, his extreme paranoia had only emphasised just how bad forced sleep was for them.

Harry smiles as Ron drinks the last of the Jack and slumps into a drunken stupor for some more restless sleep while Hermione skulls a bottle of Russian branded Vodka. Unlike Ron, Hermione only drinks expensive alcohol, stating that if she was gonna die of a pickled liver that at least it would be an expensive pickled liver. Continuing on his way, Harry makes it to Missoula by first light, averaging at nearly two hundred miles per hour. They hit Philadelphia by mid morning, the bustling streets an antithesis to comfort for them, but they haven't eaten in three days, not a proper meal at any rate and so getting food into their wasted bodies is something of a priority for them. That is, if they can manage to keep it down. Chances are though, they won't be able to.

Before they can park and subject themselves to the horrors that is humanity in a large gathering, Harry has a panic attack and has to nose their car back out ono the open road, heading towards New York. Philadelphia is too busy for them, the crowded streets too crushed full of people. It's all he can do to not curl up in a ball and cry till his body runs out of tears to produce. He's done that before, it resulted in a massive headache and itchy eyes for the next three days.

When Harry reaches Princeton, he's feeling much more calm and collected and Hermione's awake and dozily staring out the window. Ron has sunk into a drunken stupor, slowly coming off the natural high that too much alcohol produces and is sinking into a deep depression. Harry will have to confiscate the red heads gun and knife collection at some stage, because they were all at risk of suicide. Sometimes, when the going gets rough, the tough loose their nerve and spiral ever downward. PTSD does that to you, Harry snorted to himself.

Just before Princeton Junction there are three diners. Harry could have chosen to eat healthy like Hermione would have preferred or he could have chosen the 'bar and cantina' that Ron would have loved. But Harry wanted steak and he was going to get steak, so he chose the pretentious sounding 'Princetonian Diner' which promised standard American fare. And had better bloody include a steak. Pulling into the car park and sliding between two fairly up-market BMW's that had seen better days, Harry turned the engine off and twisted around his seat and pulled out a pair of sobriety potions from Hermione's bag. They were running low and the chances of any of them gathering up the nerve it took to stake out the wizarding section of a major city was fairly unlikely. They'd have to make do.

Harry's the first through the wood and glass door, his hand splayed wide as he presses it against the clear glass and pushes the door open, stepping into a blast of air conditioned air. His gaze sweeps the length of the diner, noting the solid looking table and chairs filled with chattering couples, families and friends. It's so ordinary that it takes him a moment to regain his mental balance. The sight of a perky brunet with blue eyes unnerves him enough that it takes him half a minute to regain his sense of self. She looks like Lavender Brown, and for a moment the image of his house mate overlaps the waitress, blood smeared over her face and her neck a ruin of sharp teeth marks.

"Hi!" The brunette smiles welcomingly, her teeth even and white between cherry red lips. Her name badge reads 'Jenny' and her shirt is tight enough that she looks like she's busting out of it. Harry thumbs his lordship ring and waits, Hermione behind him regaining her own sense of reality while Ron hides behind Harry's thin but broad shoulders.

"Table for three?" Jenny asks chirpily, leading them through the bustling restaurant to a table at the back of the room next to a pair of men in a military uniform and their white-picket fence wives. "Here you are! Just yell if you need anything!"

Jenny then sweeps away with a broad smile to collect clear tumblers and a pitcher of cold water, condensation streaming down the sides. Ron avoids her eyes and ducks his head, his long red hair falling into his eyes as he stares at his hands, their trembling taken for nervousness than the impending shock and fear that her appearance inspires in him. Hermione grabs one long-fingered hand in her own brittle and bony one, holding Ron tightly as Harry grips his arm, steadying him.

"Breath, Ron," Harry murmurs, ignoring the curious gazes drawn their way. "Breath, mate, just breath nice and steady."

Ron nods shakily, bobbing his head up and down. "Yeah, breath, good idea."

Hermione smiles, bringing the waitress over one last time, her mouth pinched and thin as she does so. "Three burgers with a side of fries," she orders.

"And three cokes," Harry adds swiftly, gripping Ron tightly, centring him.

Jenny smiles brightly, nodding. She then turns to Ron, concerned. "Is he okay?" She asks them, curious.

"You remind us of someone who died," Harry replies coldly, his eyes glacial.

Jenny pales, stepping backwards. "I'm sorry…"

"Don't be," Hermione says tiredly, "you didn't know. It's not your fault."

Absolved, the waitress backs away, fleeing the area clearly uncomfortable with the idea of reminding a damaged man of the death of a friend. Behind them the two soldiers are watching them, their eyes suspicious and sympathetic. Somehow, Harry knows they've guessed that he, Ron and Hermione are 'suffering' from PTSD. As though it was their choice to be this fucked up and damaged. He rubs his thigh, the burning pain of a tightening muscle distracting him momentarily from his friends plight before he shoves the pain aside and re-concentrating on the matter at hand.

Ron's eyes are red-rimmed and glazed, he's burning up beneath his clothing but Harry's can't tell if he's actually sick or has the shakes. They all drink enough that they are easily diagnosable as alcoholics; that they suffer from substance abuse because it's the easiest way to manage their pain and forget who they are. Harry suspects that without help, it's very likely that they'll be dead before they're fifty. Hermione has theorised that it will be sooner than that, but none of them seem to be able to care enough to change it.

"I feel sick," Ron mutters, shaking.

Harry thins his lips but doesn't do anything, what can he do? Any trip to a hospital will result in numerous tests that will only point to things they already know. They are alcoholics because of their PTSD. They have PTSD because they fought in a War. What else is there to know? His chest aches at the thought and he rubs at it, digging the heel of his hand into his sternum while his other does the same to his leg. He suspects that if he didn't have extreme nerve damage from the cruciatus curse that he'd be on the floor screaming in pain.

"Here you are!" Jenny is back, bearing three plates loaded with food and is quick to place them onto the table and to flee once more. She throws a quick: "enjoy your meal!" over her shoulder as she darts over to where three teens sit, calling for more root beer.

"Eat," Hermione advises them and Ron and Harry do so, knowing that their appetites might not last longer than a few moments.

Ron barely manages a few mouthfuls before he collapsing backwards, his legs splayed, his face pale and sweating. "I am tired, guys, can we go now?"

Harry, bolting down his meal still, grunts in vague answer. Ron does look sick but not nearly enough to drive him from his food and back onto the road. Hermione solves their dilemma by gathering their food up and packing it away and sending Harry off to settle the bill. By the time Harry's returned the military guys have cornered Hermione and are giving her unnecessary advice, eyes concerned while their wives baby Ron, plying him with damp napkins and glasses of water.

"Lets go," Harry barks, driving Ron from his chair and Hermione out the door. He casts the military types a dark look, suspicious and wary of their motives. Everyone lies and everyone had ulterior motives; even those who are heroes. He stalks from the diner in a foul mood and drives them to the nearest motel, settling the account for at least five days.

Harry doesn't remember falling asleep, but waking up in Hermione and Ron's shared queen bed isn't something he's inexperienced in. They often sleep better with another person beside them; memories of the War, when they had no idea of whom to trust. Knowing that someone had your back, even while asleep, was more often than not the only thing that kept them as sane as they were. Beside him Hermione is curled up into Ron's side, the redhead sprawled across them, burning up with fever.

A side long glance at the clock alerts Harry to the knowledge that he's been asleep for close to ten hours, his eyes gritty and sore while his head aches mercilessly. He knows these symptoms. Knows that they have the flu. So he grabs a bottle of water, spelling the contents into their stomachs to keep them hydrated before collapsing once more. Who knew that in order to get over awful dreams and memories, one just needs to get dangerously sick. There's got to be some kind of irony to that.

It takes him a further ten minutes to gather up the strength to move once more and he staggers from the room without shoes or a jacket. He's too hot anyway and it's not like it's winter with six foot of snow on the ground. Of course, it's unlikely that there'd be that much snow here, because as far north as it is, it's equally domesticated and covered in too many buildings for the last lingering heat of the summer months to escape. He climbs into the Buick, starting the engine with a swift rev and the turning of a metal key. Their neighbours watch him go, peeping between the blinds. Humans are curious creatures.

He returns to Princeton Junction and follows the signs out to Princeton General. It's packed with buses of people filing in, each one receiving a small card hung on some string to be placed around their necks. He joins the fray, darting up to the medicine counter which was unattended and slipping inside. The sheer number of medication bottles and boxes is overwhelming, but Hermione had been training to be a Healer after the War, so he knows something of colds and flus. He picks up enough cough syrup to last for two months between three people and follows it up with a pack of codeine.

Slipping back into the fray of screaming children and whinging adults all moving onto the many doctors and nurses that were wallowing in numbers twice as many as they were used to. Listening to the repeated orders of "yellow to the first floor; blue to the doors; everyone else, wait to be called". Harry slides between two people and slips his hand into the the pocket of a Mum who's wrestling her screaming two year old. A blue slip returns along with his hand and he drops his own untouched slips to the floor and, with a small smile and a glamour charm on his face hiding the pallid, sweaty truth of his features, stalks free of the hospital and back out into the car lot.

Harry returns to the Motel with a spluttering engine and a desperate desire to sleep. Entering their room he finds Hermione awake and hazy eyed, clearly having just woken up. She looks like a wreck, the downside of being unable to sleep unless someone is beside you tends to result in getting sicker much quicker than usual. Particularly with their shot immune systems. Drinking heavily and being in constant emotional pain drains a person quicker than expected. He hands her a codeine before measuring out three shot glasses of cough medicine. If nothing else it should help them breath easier.

Ron protests faintly when Harry wakes him long enough to pour both liquid medicine and tablets down his throat. The red head subsides his grumbled complaints once his head stops throbbing and his chest yields a shit ton of pale yellow mucus. Harry wrinkles his nose in disgust even as he wipes the sputum away. Hermione, uncaring of where Harry acquired enough drugs to last them the next six months, happily collapses next to her best friend, dragging Harry down with her. Harry tugs the little cup of medicine that he'd nicked from an overwhelmed doctor in the hospital, figuring that them handing out medicine was probably good reason to take it. He does so, dry, wincing at the way the tablets stick to his throat and feel like they're choking him.

The next three days are a haze of sleep, piss, drink water, take medication, ensure Ron and Hermione (who are sicker than he is) take their medication, spell water into their bodies, spell urine from their bodies and try and coax them to eat the 'healthy' sandwiches he buys at a local deli. By the time Hermione's better, they've been her seven days and the managers getting antsy for them to leave. Ron's still sick as a dog, his face white and his breathing shallow.

By day nine Hermione's done everything she can for the red head and admits defeat. They need to go to a hospital. Harry settles the accounts, adding on an extra three hundred dollars for the fumigation of their room after admitting that the reason they overstayed was because they were really, really sick. The manager watches him go, not pleased. Meanwhile Hermione packs up the car, tossing the various bottles and pills into Harry's duffle bag and then bundles Ron into the backseat, unashamedly stealing pillows and blankets from the Motel. She leaves a fifty to cover their cost.

Harry drives them back to Princeton Junction, stopping only to refuel and pick up sandwiches and a two, gallon bottles of warm water. Harry considers returning to Princeton General, but the chances of someone recognising him, whether the Doctor or Security staff, is too high. So with a resigned sigh and a smugly knowing look on Hermione's face, Harry turns the nose of the Buick towards Princeton Plains Teaching Hospital. Harry only hopes that in trusting baby Doctors with his friends life, he doesn't end up killing Ron. Princeton Plains is halfway between the University and the very edge of Pennsylvania. Harry suspects that they get patients from Princeton, New York and Philadelphia. Once Harry's parked the car, Hermione takes charge of Ron and Harry, directing the darker haired man to support their red headed friend, still bundled up in blankets, and chivvies them into the hospitals entrance, guiding the two men into the 'free' clinic and checks in with the nurse in charge, 'Brenda'.

Brenda is apparently impressed with Hermione's concise ability to distill the past five years into three sentences and then expand on what the problem is today because she assures them it's only a twenty minute wait despite the crowding of at least fifty other patients around them. Admittedly, it could be because Ron looks like he's about to keel over at any second. After all, Harry's pretty much holding his practically comatose friend upright, one arm on his chest, being soothed by the faint by steady heartbeat and the other rapped around his shoulders, keeping the blanket firm about him.

It's closer to forty by the time a doctor can see them and Ron's breathing has become so faint that both Harry and Hermione take turns at pressing their ears to Ron chest, counting his heartbeat and feeling his pulse. Its weak and thready, and Hermione's more than a little concerned. The doctor assigned to them is 'House', a tall man in jeans and a t-shirt with a suit jacket thrown over the top as though trying to pretend he's a professional. Harry settles himself in the corner, one hand in his pocket gripping his knife tightly, the other wrapped around his chest loosely, stroking the scar that runs down his right side. Hermione takes charge, setting Ron up on the examination table and stripping him free of the blankets they'd stolen from the motel and bundling them up into a corner.

"So, what seems to be the problem?" Doctor House asks, leaning heavily on his cane, his blue eyes intently watching Ron and Hermione's interaction.

Hermione turns to him, her honey brown eyes serious. "Shallow breathing, thready heartbeat, sweating, fever of 107 Fahrenheit and he's been like this for a while now."

"It got worse over the past two days," Harry interjects, his concerned gaze resting on his friends.

"And you didn't think to bring him in earlier?" Doctor House snarks, moving forwards jerkily, swaying from side to side, nearly knocking into Hermione as he shuffled up into Ron's face, his hands smoothing along the redheads throat. "Swollen lymph nodes, he has a cold."

"That's what we thought too," Hermione agrees, staring up at the Doctor determinedly. Harry knows that look. It's the look Hermione gets when she's being stubborn and refusing to give ground. She got that look a lot when they were in the company of the Malfoys and their houseguests. "He can't swallow now though, and he's been complaining of his hands and feet going numb and severe back pain."

Harry wrinkled his nose, "Hermione…"

"No, Harry," Hermione snapped, turning on her green eyed friend. "I'm aware that the back pain could be nothing, but to exclude anything could exclude the correct diagnoses!"

Harry held up his hands, backing down. "As you say."

Doctor House watches them carefully before returning his wary gaze onto Ron who was sliding sideways, Hermione just barely managing to catch him in time. Harry joins his friend, hiding his limp with difficulty. Apparently his scars that ran the length of his leg were playing up, stiffening the muscles badly enough that he'd need to work them through later on. It wasn't as though they hurt after all.

"Easy Ron, easy," Harry murmurs, wrapping an arm around his friend and steadying him. "Come on mate, open those baby blues."

Doctor House snorts, rolling his eyes and he shuffles closer. "Wake up!" He orders, snapping his fingers in Ron's ears.

"No!" Hermione shouts, shoving Doctor House backwards and into the cabinets behind him. Ron freaks out, his eyes snapping wide open and watching him, Harry knows that his friend is not seeing the hospital but the Malfoy's dungeon. An assumption that proves correct when Ron starts screaming.

"What the hell?" Doctor House shouts, leaning heavily on the bench behind him, wide eyes watching Harry and Hermione fight with Ron, slapping his face and yelling at him to _snap out of it, please, Ron, please_! Realising that the two weren't going to answer him soon, Doctor House throws the door to the examination room wide open, hollering for help.

Brenda answers him with alacrity, swooping in to aid Harry and Hermione into holding the thrashing Ron down, slightly stunned to see the young man screaming and crying for the two people that were right beside him. House staggers over to the cabinet holding the sedatives and grabbed the nearest one containing .1 milligrams and then, with the aid of Brenda and Hermione, injected the dosage into Ron's arm.

Harry slumps over his friend, still holding his head and presses their foreheads together. "Ron," he breathes, staring into wide blue eyes. "You're okay, we're out of there, mate. They're never gonna get us again."

Ron winces as he nods, still shaky and fearful. "'Mione?" He whimpers, searching for his other friend who's busy explaining to Doctor House and Nurse Brenda just what the hell happened just now. "'Mione?" Ron's voice is shaking and his grip on Harry's arms is weak enough to break when he pulls back. Hermione shoots the redhead a curious glance, pausing her conversation long enough to meet his eyes. "I can't feel my legs," he whispers, looking terrified.

Hermione pales and grabs his hand. "It'll be okay, Ron, we'll get help for you."

"Can you hold my hand Hermione?" Ron asks, scared. "Please?"

Harry feels himself sway, terror overtaking him. "We are, Ronnie, we are holding your hands." Harry tells him, shaking.

"What's happening to me, Harry?" Ron asks, turning his head to his dark haired friend. "Am I dying?"

Harry thins his lips and shakes his head, ignoring his trembling. "No, I won't let you. Not now, not ever!"

Ron smiles at Harry, relaxing because he believes in Harry. He knows that Harry won't ever let him down. Not now. Not ever. "Okay," he breathes, sinking into a stupor, exhaustion rolling over him like a tide. "Okay, Harry. I trust you." Ron falls asleep with a smile on his face, his hands resting in his friends own.

Doctor House watches them carefully, curiously, before turning to Brenda and meeting her concerned gaze. "Admit him, send green eyes up to my office when they're settled in ICU."

"ICU?" Brenda questions, watching the irreverent doctor make his way over to the door. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Doctor House looks at the trio and shifts his grip on his cane. "I get the feeling this is only going to be the beginning." He leaves the room, swaying from side to side as he uses his free hand to tap out a message on his pager, contacting his team.

Brenda watches him go long enough to see him slide around the desk and out of view. She then pages her assistant for a gurney and shuffles over to the trio of PTSD sufferers, helping the brunette woman and raven haired guy steady the slowly dying redhead. Somedays Brenda wonders just why it's always the kids that are hit hardest. They're all wearing long-sleeves and jeans, their clothes are baggy, hanging loosely on them like a second, ill-fitting skin. None of them are well, but for the moment Brenda will focus on the dying one, leaving the other two to their own devices.

The assistant nurse comes in, an intern following her, his eyes bright and curious which swiftly dies as he takes in the frail trio of patients in front of him. It always hurts watching the naïvety and innocence of the baby doctors ding swift deaths, hardening into cynicism and suspicion. Every one starts as the naïve idiot who wants to save the world. Every one of them finishes as the sarcastic arsehole who knows they can't but is too stubborn to quit at it anyway. _House had been like that once_, Brenda reflects as she hoists the skinny redhead onto the gurney, tugging his shirt down when it rides up and feels sick to her stomach at the thin white lines that decorate his pale skin. Once being the operative word.

The intern takes charge, barely stammering as he directs the redheads friends to follow him up t intensive care, the nurse helping him wheel the gurney out of the clinic drawing Cuddy's attention from behind her desk, the ever present phone glued to her ear as she watches them leave. Brenda gathers up the days old blankets smelling of sweat, piss, medicine and sickness and tosses them into a bin marked: Hazard Waste. She then leaves the clinic briefly to wash herself down and change into new scrubs. Its the second time today she's done this. It won't be the last either.

Harry watches Hermione draw the pale green blanket back, Ron, now dressed in a white hospital gown, collapses into the bed, shaking from the exertion. Harry picks his friends pale, narrow feet up off the floor and slides them beneath the waffle blanket and crisp sheets. Ron's red hair is stark against the pillow and Harry feels awful as he sinks into the chair by Ron's bedside, watching the intern slide needles and catheters into his arm; tapping, pulling and pricking the redhead, setting up an IV and a bag full of nutrients.

The monitor beside Ron's bedside reads 40 beats per minute with 80 percent oxygen saturation; Hermione, fearful for Ron's health, demands that he gets an oxygen mask. The intern, knowing more about medicine than a half trained healer, doesn't argue the need for oxygen but does argue the need for a mask. He provides the tubing that will distribute the oxygen to Ron, hooking it behind his ears and beneath his nose. Ron breathes easier and Harry feels himself relaxing. Ron is stable now, so he stands and makes his way around the bed to Hermione's side.

"Doctor House demanded my presence," he reminds her, watching Ron slide once more into unconsciousness. "Or do you want to be the one to be present for his diagnosis?"

Hermione doesn't remove her eyes from Ron's face, her feelings obvious and painful for Harry to see. He has the feeling that should they ever get better, Ron and Hermione will end up together once more. Happy and healthy and together. It should make him happy but all it does is inspire bitterness and anger. He doesn't want to be alone.

"You go," she says finally. "I'll stay here, with him."

Harry nods silently, backing away feeling as though he's intruding, his heart aching. "I'll be going then." A stop at the nurses station in ICU gets him the directions he needs. It's on the same floor and just around the corner. Harry suspects that Doctor House is more than just a clinical doctor, that he has a speciality that is of far more worth to the hospital than his bedside manner. Sure enough he ends up in a corridor of glass panelled walls partitioning off the side into a conference room come break room and an office concealed by closed blinds. The nearest door reads: Gregory House, M.D, Head of Diagnostics. Harry suspects that they've lucked out on this one and he limps, cursing his scars, over to the conference room door and knocks drawing a trio of surprised gazes and House's own smugly satisfied one.


	2. Middle Beginning

_Ever Continuing Onwards..._

_Sure enough he ends up in a corridor of glass panelled walls partitioning off the side into a conference room come break room and an office concealed by closed blinds. The nearest door reads: Gregory House, M.D, Head of Diagnostics. Harry suspects that they've lucked out on this one and he limps, cursing his scars, over to the conference room door and knocks drawing a trio of surprised gazes and House's own smugly satisfied one._

. . . .

House limps over to the door and yanks if open, hustling Harry inside and directing him to the seat beside the blonde doctor that looks like a model and is watching him with curiosity and a small amount of disdain. The woman beside him has reddish-brown hair and concerned grey eyes, she looks at House like he hangs the moon each night and Harry wonders if this will impede her ability to help his friend. The other man looks like Kingsley, dark skin, dark eyes and a smooth way of observing that sends chills down Harry's spine. Somehow he thinks he'll hate being here, under their gazes. He feels like a amoeba under a microscope and exposed like a nerve.

A second knock on the door has Harry spinning around and watching a tall, brown haired man slide inside, his eyes are kind and he has a sardonic smile on his lips as he takes in the gathering of doctors before a white board written up with symptoms in black ink. House smirks at the other man, watching him closely as he leans against the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, still smiling.

"Excellent, now we're all here," House leans on his cane, pinning Harry with a close glare and Harry feels anger stir in his gut. He's been looked at like that far too many times in the past to be unnerved by it, but that doesn't mean he's happy to be here. "Green eyes, your name?"

"Harry Potter," Harry replies amused. "Gregory House, I presume?"

"British," House muses, looking interested. "You didn't sound British before."

"I've been away for a fair amount of time," Harry deflects, his gaze roving the trio of doctors seated beside him. "And they are?"

"Sitting right here," the blonde says, annoyed. _Australian by the accent_, Harry observes, _but not suffering the same predilection to foolish mate-ship like the rest of his idiotic countrymen_. Damaged then. Pretty too.

"Chase!" The woman scolds, glaring at the blonde. She turns to Harry then, smiling tightly. "Alison Cameron, the idiot over there is Robert Chase and this is Eric Foreman." She gestures first to herself, then the blonde and finally the tall black guy. Harry nods at them silently.

"And you?" He turns to the guy leaning against the wall behind him, he feels discomforted by this hut doesn't dare move. Doing so would inspire more curiosity on Houses part and that would not be a good idea, he thinks.

"James Wilson," the brown haired man introduces himself with that sardonic smile. As if he was laughing at the world. "Oncologist."

"Cancer doctor," Harry notes dryly. "Delightful." He turns his gaze on to House, "I presume you want the symptoms my friend has been showing?"

"Yes," House admits freely, limping over to the white board and picking up his marker once more. It's blue this time and Harry knows this is because he's about to be asked about Ron's fit in the clinic examination room. "You're going to tell me-"

"About Ron's reaction to loud noises and why he tried to scream the clinic down," Harry drawls, making his way over to the sink slowly, trying to mask his limp as much as possible.

"Is your leg hurting you?" Cameron demands, half-standing as if she wanted to race over to him and shove him into a chair.

Harry smirks, "not as much as it once did." Honest enough, but then his leg had once been cut from hip to knee down to the bone. A raised, ridged scar was all that was left.

Wilson is watching him, putting two and two together and getting four; like House already had done. "You have post traumatic stress disorder," it's a statement and all Harry has to do is nod in acknowledgement and they can all get back to Ron like they should. Harry however is finding it harder and harder to regain his common sense as he fills a deep blue mug with cold water, the sides spilling over as water and oxygen mix and create an upswell of bubbles. He shrugs in non-answer.

"You do," House interjects, his voice as curious as his face. "It's on your friends paperwork. You and your pretty little girlfriend have PTSD, don't deny it."

"What's to deny?" Harry muses out loud, missing or perhaps ignoring the flashes of horror crossing Cameron's face while Foreman closes his eyes tightly. Chase however seems to have more of an idea and the look of realisation that floods his expression is revealing as it is disconcerting.

"You ran afoul of those Death thingy's in the nineties, didn't you?" Chase asks, his voice tight. "It was all over the news. Terrorist attacks in London and natural disasters everywhere."

"We ran afoul," Harry nods tiredly. "We were help captive for three weeks before we escaped with three other prisoners." He turns, ignoring the way that water still spills from the cup in the sink behind him, soothed by the sound of running water.

Cameron watches him, her hand pressed to her mouth, horrified. Chase just looks darkly unhappy, his hazel eyes stormy with an understanding that no one else can match because he _knows_. A knowledge that is hard pressed to be met _unless_ _you were in the know_. Foreman is attempting to look bored but not quite managing it, while Wilson is teary eyed and sympathetic, as if he can possibly understand. House just looks vindicated and triumphant, smugly assured in his assumed superiority.

"So, we have a twenty three year old male," House writes on a clean board, ignoring the other one that has 'strokes', 'strangulation', and 'infection' written on it. Harry assumes this is another case, one they're yet to solve, or have solved and are yet to clean off. He returns his gaze to the board House is writing on, watching the older man scrawl 'back pain', 'PTSD', 'flu?' and 'paralysis' on the whiteboard.

Harry shuffles closer, snatching the marker from the doctors hand and writes three words up that cause chills to run down the diagnosticians spine: _Peripheral Neuropathy_.

"Peripheral Neuropathy?" Foreman looks interested now, leaning forwards and staring at the narrow chicken scratch that stands out amongst House's blockier, harsher writing. "How-?" He stops himself, maybe he doesn't want to know the answer to that.

"The terrorists," Harry shrugs, as if it doesn't bother him. "They found a way to light up the nervous system. Turn it on and make it radiate pain. They've been fired up so much that none of us can quite feel pain like we used to."

House shudders beside him, rubbing at the top of his thigh, as if trying to work out if the pain he experienced daily could compare to your entire body feeling as though it was on fire. He suspects not. "Nasty," he drawls, snatching his marker back. "But that's mine, get your own."

Chase rolls his eyes and Harry smirks, shrugging. "Possessive much, you compensating for something?" Harry grins brittle and shark-like while House pauses in stunned amazement. Clearly no one had traded barbs with him for too long.

"Yes, my leg which is crippled," House shoots back, turning around to meet the dark haired mans green gaze. It's intense and dark, speaking of pain filled nights and cruelty unknown to most.

Harry's smile is sharp, too many teeth shown between tight lips. "That's not all that's crippled, old man," his voice is cruel. "Fix my friend, and soon." He then turns to the sink and shuts off the water, making his way from the room, pausing long enough to add one last thing. "Everyone is broken, House, all that differentiates are the levels."

With that parting shot Harry leaves the doctors behind, three baby doctors gaping after him while Wilson unrepentantly grins happily. House just smirks, amused. Potter is interesting, as are his friends. This was going to be fun. Limping back to the white board, House decides to actually start this case, the other guy -Harvey?- has already been cured, well mostly, and will be leaving the hospital in a week.

"Differentials, go!" House barks as he fixes himself a coffee, listening as Cameron and Foreman jockey for head position, offering their own ideas at the expense of the others. Business as usual then.

"It's not cancer," Wilson offers, knowing that he was here to meet the dark haired man and give House an opinion, not to fix the dying friend who was less interesting to the blue eyed doctor.

House shoots his friend a dark look, uninterested. "It's not an infection." He states, "the flu is simply what started it."

"It could be autoimmune," Chase offers, startling Cameron in her angry diatribe against Forman's suggestion of an angiogram. "We should do an MRI."

"An MRI won't tell if it's autoimmune," Cameron says, confused.

"No, but I offered a good idea along with a terrible idea," Chase states, waving off her confusion. "I thought that's what we were doing."

House stares at his Australian fellow in amusement, "Blondie has a point." He snatches up the startlingly complete medical file written in tiny, cramped handwriting that is oddly spiky and flowing. "The patient has had intermittent back pain for the past year and a half."

"The longest running symptom," Chase adds, backing up the older man, looking at his own file. "He's also paralysed."

"That only started recently," Cameron interrupts, as if the most recent symptom should be overruled because it loosed relevance.

"He's been having trouble eating and sleeping too," Foreman assesses, noting that the writer had listed that their patient was an alcoholic because of his PTSD.

"Alright," House sighs, bored. "Get an MRI, angiogram and PET scan."

Chase led the charge from the room, Foreman swift on his heels, Cameron lingered behind only to realise that Wilson was still there and clearly waiting for her to leave. She did so with a huff, tossing her hair back over her shoulder and stalking off.

"What did you do to piss her off?" Wilson wonders, amused.

"Like you don't know," House snarks back, leading the way into his office. A tall thin brunette is standing outside his door, she looks lost and sad. House groans but lets her in, recognising the female friend of his red-haired patient.

"Doctor House?" She asks, worried. "Uh, not to be rude, but what did you say to Harry?"

"That he has a cute butt," House snorts, uninterested.

She smirks slightly, amused. "Unlikely, because somehow I don't think he's your type."

"You say that like House is his," Wilson smiles, his brown eyes warm as he takes in her thin figure. House rolls his eyes, his Jewish friend did like them small and sporty. The brunette was both, albeit a tad more fragile than usual.

"There's potential," she admits. "Sorry, Hermione Granger; Harry's best friend and conscience."

"Tough gig," House snarks, rolling his eyes. "Why are you here?"

Hermione shrugs loosely. "I really don't want Harry to go postal on people, so I try to keep his metal state as balanced as possible. He carries a lot of guilt around with him. We all do." Her voice is quiet by the end and sad. House meets her brown gaze and wonders if she could ooze more compassion if she tried.

"What are you talking about?" Wilson is confused, staring at the woman with concern now, rather than a small dose of lust and desire.

Hermione smiles tightly and raises the sleeves of her shirt, baring thick, white scars that are angled in such a way that it's impossible to believe that they were caused by her. In the middle of her left arm is the word 'mudblood', carved deeply into her flesh.

"Oh god," Wilson breathes, shocked and dismayed.

House rolls his eyes, "shouldn't that be Yahweh?" He snipes, circling his desk to stand beside the brunette woman, looking into her eyes. "You're scared. Not for green eyes, no, for the other guy. Why?"

She takes a step backwards, looking conflicted and guilty. House thinks she'd make a good Catholic, the cross in the hollow of her throat, only visible because he's looking for it, suggests she is. Unless of course she only has that because it offers comfort to a sick woman with a dying boyfriend.

"Harry," she licks her lips and clenches her eyes tight. "We're all fucked up, but Harry. He had it worst. Always drawing their attention from Ron and I. Always taking the fall. Its our fault but we can't deal with him anymore. Ron," she rubs her mouth, fingers tracing the seam of her lips. "Ron suggested that we leave. Had Ron not been sick we'd be back in the UK; he want's to make up with his Mum, but Harry." She shrugs. "He's not ready."

"So you figure, what?" House leans on his cane, smirking and staring at her, daring her to refute his assumptions. "You'll just leave him? Let him survive or starve?"

"No," Hermione denies, shaking her head. "It's not like that!" She rakes a hand through her hair. "We want kids. We want a family!" She paces for three steps before spinning around and pinning him with a furious gaze. "But Harry just wants to drive and mess about. He doesn't seem to even want to live!" She pauses once more, hands buried in her hair. "What am I supposed to do?" She asks rhetorically.

"Why do you need me to answer?" House asks her sarcastically, stumping back behind his chair. "You have it all figured out. What do you need me for?"

Wilson is staring at Hermione in disgust, recognising the symptoms of PTSD inspired desperation of a person to cut and run from a person that reminds them too much of the trauma that they experienced. Hermione stares at the doctors in desperation and fear, knowing that they cared little for her problems that they thought she was running from. She shakes her head once more and flees the office, a tall dark shadow pushing off of the wall around the corner and stepping out into the light.

Harry has tears running down his face, his green eyes alive with misery and as he meets Wilson and House's eyes, he nods slowly, acknowledging them. Thanking them, before turning and limping back down the hall. Leaving the two doctors to feel as though they had just seen the death of something precious and beautiful. Something special.

"Well," House huffs. "That was fun, we should do that more often."

"Oh yes," Wilson snarks, rolling his eyes, his hands on his hips. "That was completely delightful."

"You say that like it's my fault our three patients are falling apart at the seams!" House protests, amused.

Wilson rolls his eyes again, "no, but you aren't helping them either."

"Oh please, better he finds out now than later," House states, his expression pained.

Wilson sighs tiredly, knowing that there was nothing more he would get out of House for the day. Decided, the oncologist ducks from the office, leaving his friend to his Vicodin and soap opera. House wouldn't miss him, but he would want his puzzle to unfold a little more. Perhaps he could oversee the angiogram. Striding down the hall Wilson nods to the various nurses, doctors and patients he recognises, stopping briefly at House's patients room which was empty and then making his way to where he suspected House's team had the patient tucked away in an MRI.

Harry leant against the wall just outside the MRI room, his green eyes hooded as he watched Hermione cry and plead to a non-existent god. She was on her knees, cross clasped between her hands tight enough to cut into the fleshy pads of her fingers and palms. Its agonising to see, but Harry doesn't move from his unseen corner of the room. He feels more than sees Wilson arrive at his elbow, the taller and older man curiously torn between moving and comforting the wailing woman kneeling over the black plastic chair or Harry, leaning nonchalantly against the wall.

"Are you okay?" The oncologist asks finally, directing his words to the emotionless man beside him. "You look pretty pale."

Harry smiles thinly, tiredly and shrugs. "I'm fine," the lie doesn't taste as bitter as it once did, because it's true now. Because he knows that while he's not okay now, he will be. "You should help Hermione though, if you can. She thinks Ron is dying."

"And you know he isn't?" Wilson shoots back, king of detecting lies thanks to his friendship with House. Sometimes you have to read between the lines, catch what isn't said more than what is.

Harry shrugged, tugging his right sleeve up far enough to reveal the red burn on his wrist. A marker of wandless magic transfer between human beings. Wilson raises his eyebrows in surprise, he'd known of course, that the trio were magical. It was hard not to notice, it all but poured off of Harry in the conference room. Turbulent and cruel, tugging at Wilson's own mediocre core in a show of blatant dominance. Hermione was like a cool spring in comparison, undamaged and unscarred by her experiences compared to Harry.

"You're bleeding magic into his core?" Wilson asks, curious and cautious. Over bleeding magical residue into another being can cause all kinds of problems, particularly if the other being is a person and unknowing of the bleed.

"It will keep him alive while they run their tests," Harry replies shortly. "Your friend, Gimpy, does he know you're magic?"

"No," Wilson admits. He shrugs at the green eyed mans curiosity, "technically I'm not. Can't even levitate a feather, let alone support another magical being."

"And the blonde, is he as magical as you are?" Harry inquires, accepting Wilson's answer for now.

"Chase?" Wilson mulls it over, wondering why he'd never put together Rowan Chase's dominating magical core with Chase's own non-existent one. It certainly explained the other doctors silent dislike and disgust of his son. Chase was a great doctor, brilliant even, but damaged from his father's uncaring nature. "He has no core."

Harry frowns, confused. "You sure about that?"

"Very sure," Wilson confirms.

Harry rocks back contemplatively, "that doesn't explain the gaping hole I could feel in him. Like it had been ripped from him."

"You think his Father stole his magic?" Wilson is horrified. The theft of magic was tantamount to rape, if not worse. It led to all kinds of instabilities and inability regarding mental and physical conditions. Research had suggested that the magical rape of a child could lead to murderous inclinations and volatile tempers.

"Perhaps," Harry deflects. He considers the floor and his dirty shoes. "Fix Ron for me and I'll fix Chase for you."

Wilson regards the other man, worried. "How?"

"Painfully," Harry admits unconcerned. "I'll call it back to him, likely resulting in the death of the one who stole it from him."

Wilson doesn't know what to say to that so he leaves it be. Somedays it paid to be ignorant, House has taught him that over the years. "Where are you staying?"

Harry barks a sharp, short laugh. It lacks all humour and draws Hermione's attention. The brunette is silently sobbing in the middle of the room, being comforted by a nurse who had wandered in on the woman self-flagellation of crying out to god in perfect Latin. She stares at him as though she's never seen him before, taking in the sharp angles of his face and jaded eyes.

"Harry," she whispers, regretting her harsh words from earlier. Harry smiles brittle and cold at her but makes his way over to her side anyway and she knows that he, somehow, knows every foolish thing she spoke. She also doubts that the doctor told him anything at all, he doesn't look guilty enough. Sad, yes, but not guilty.

Harry wraps her up into his arms, all bony, pointy bones and thin muscles that bulge with protective instinct. The door opens up with Ron in a wheelchair, listing to the side, and Doctors Cameron and Chase pushing him from the room. Hermione sheds Harry's embrace and launches herself at her friend, checking him over desperately. Harry follows, nervous and tightly wound. Ron smiles at them dopily, the sedative from hours ago still in his weakened system.

"Harry," Ron breathes, tugging his dark haired friend into a loose hug. "I thought you'd left me."

Harry smiles tightly, pressing the other man into his chest. "Sorry mate, not just yet."

Ron nods dully, still grasping Hermione's hand and tugs Harry into position behind him, silently asking the other man to push his chair. Cameron and Chase watch the trio stumble down the hallway in utter confusion. Chase regains himself swiftly and darts after them while Wilson joins Cameron in the waiting area, his hands in his pockets.

"That's against protocol," Cameron complains half-heartedly, not really caring. After Harry's admittance in the conference room earlier, the trio could get away with murder according to Cameron.

"Like you care," Wilson jibes, knowing Cameron better than herself at times. She smiles at him, smirking slightly. "Come on, we'd better catch up, you never know what they might do!"

Cameron rolls her eyes but follows the oncologist towards intensive care. "You know," she murmurs as they reach the nurses station, pulling Wilson to a halt beside her. "Chase said something funny earlier."

"Oh?" Wilson is intrigued, what could their resident squib and liar have to say that isn't good news for the three war heroes in the room down the hall.

"He said that Ron and Harry and the girl are heroes," Cameron says, confused. "That they should be treated respectfully because they fought in a way."

Any comment to that statement was put on hold as Chase screamed through the door: "Code Blue! I need help in here STAT!"

Cameron and Wilson launch into action, racing down the hall and into the ICU room, taking in Harry restraining a screaming Hermione in the corner, his face white with pain, and Chase trying to intubate the patient so that he could get air into the redheads lungs. The man was flatlining and seizing, his limbs flailing wildly. Cameron leapt into the fray, snatching up one CC of sedative from the drawer and connecting it to the redheads IV line, pressing on the plunger steadily and carefully.

Ron subsided almost immediately, collapsing backwards onto the bed and gasping around the tube that was slowly being removed from his oesophagus. Wilson, who had been helping Chase intubate the patient, collapsed sideways, wondering how the blonde intensivist did this daily. His nerves were shot straight through and he was shaking badly to boot. Cameron was moving to help Harry restrain Hermione who had belted him a good one with her elbow in his face, his nose crooked and bleeding.

Chase checked Ron's stats, determining the need for an oxygen mask when he noticed that the oxygen saturation was almost at eighty percent. Hermione had been restrained by a determined Cameron who was now settling the brunette woman beside the red haired man, plying her with sugary water and food. While Wilson dragged the raven haired man into the adjoining room, patching him up silently, noticing the developing black eye and clearly painful swelling across his cheek bones.

"How do you feel?" Wilson asks, pressing against the green eyed man's cheek bone, wondering if he'd feel it shift beneath his fingers.

"It doesn't hurt," Harry admits. "Shot nerves, remember?" He shrugs, dismissively, "she's just worried about him. She loves him."

"But not you, huh?" House's acidic voice asks from the doorway. He limps into the room, oblivious to Wilson's disapproving stare. "So, why him and not you?"

Harry shrugs, "she's more like a sister to me. They're family." But the way he speaks suggests a deeper underlying problem and the way he's looking at Wilson leaves House to believe that Harry bats for the other team. Until Cameron wanders in and draws an equally appraising eye. House rolls his eyes, disinterested already. Bisexual, how boring.

"The patient is stable," Cameron reports, missing Harry's wince. "The girlfriend has requested another bed and leave to sleep in his room. She doesn't want to leave his side."

"Granted," House smirks, not missing the way that Harry pales. His eyes widen at the sight of the raven haired man rubbing at his leg. "Are you in pain?" He asks, curious.

"A little," Harry shrugs, dismissive. "My scars always hurt when they're cold."

"But it's not cold," House states, his narrowed eyes like lasers as they take in Harry's slight form. "Let me see."

"What?" Harry yelps, shocked. "No!"

"Drop your pants before I do it for you," House orders, ignoring Wilson's rolling eyes and Cameron's scandalised expression.

Harry grumbles but complies, recognising the bitterly determined look on House's face as the one his own would get during times when he knew/thought he was right. The buckle of his belt slide open and the tongue slides free easily, clinking gently as he undoes his button and the slide of fabric against skin is loud in the silence. He hops up onto the bed and tugs off his shirt, revealing his emaciated and malnourished body for the three doctors, knowing that they'd just ask him to do so later on.

Sure enough House wastes no time in poking and prodding at the scar tissue on his leg while Wilson silently counts the ribs that press through his thin, pale skin. Cameron is quietly crying, shocked and horrified because she has moved around him and is looking at the belt marks across his shoulders and knows that Harry might have been tortured at seventeen but it wasn't the first time. This is how Chase and Foreman find them, crouched over the skinny body of their patients best friend and cataloguing ever mark, scar and blemish. Harry is oddly quiet and submissive, his green eyes nervous and wary but equally calm.

Only Wilson knows this is because he has a way of defending himself that is beyond the norm. Although, gathering from the way that Chase is watching the dark haired man, Wilson suspects that the blonde Australian doctor is close to storming from the hospital to burn the world for treating his hero like this. That, more than anything, convinces Wilson that Chase is ultimately a good guy. Even if he did screw House over several months ago with Vogler. Yeah, Wilson hasn't forgiven him that yet, nor will he any time soon.

"How long has your leg been hurting?" House demands, probing the area carefully and taking note of every shiver, wince and shudder.

Harry shrugs, "not long."

"He wouldn't be able to feel it," Cameron interjects, having regained a modicum of professionalism. "His nervous system has been destroyed, remember? For him to feel this would be agony for an or-" she gulps pathetically, wincing.

"Ordinary person?" Harry finishes for her sardonically. "Because there's such a thing, of course." He rolls his eyes.

"You sound like House," Chase smirks, amused.

Harry shoots the blonde a _Look_. "Charmed, I'm sure." He snarks. He shifts on the examination bed, uncomfortable all of a sudden. "Look, I get it. I'm messed up. Hell, I'm probably dying." He shrugs tiredly, "I've been dying since I was eleven. This is nothing new. So my leg hurts, it doesn't matter."

"Your leg doesn't matter or you don't matter?" Chase questions shrewdly, his hazel eyes narrowed. "Because I've seen this before. Act like nothings wrong. That everything just fine and dandy, but it's not, is it? But if you pretend it doesn't matter, then it's fine isn't it? You don't have to know and accept that your life is unfairly shit and there's nothing you can do about it."

Harry stares at the blonde doctor, sardonically amused. "Oh you're good, you get that psych degree on top of your medical one?"

Chase rolls his eyes, "no. I have personal experience, or don't you listen?"

"Chase!" Cameron scolds, shocked. "You can't say that!"

Harry shoots the auburn haired doctor a dry look, "well, he just did, so clearly he can."

"Your muscles are atrophying," Foreman announces, cutting across the cutting dialogue between Chase and Harry. He felt frustrated by their snide remarks, knowing that they were doing this to distract from the possibility of something truly bad happening. _Because that would completely solve __everything_, Foreman snorts internally.

"Atrophy?" Harry asks, curious. "As in they're dying?"

"Exactly," House agrees, leaning on his cane and staring at Harry with intense blue eyes. "Now we just need to find out why."

"Alcohol-associated myopathy?" Foreman suggests, remembering the file of the man next door that read 'alcoholic'. "His friend is a heavy drinker suffering from PTSD, stands to reason he's the same."

Except that magic protects the body from alcoholic poisoning and related illnesses, Wilson remembers, its one of the reasons why you can't drink magicals under the table without concentrated effort and why they've created their own alcoholic drinks that are closer to 300proof.

"Unlikely," he says, casting a knowing look at Harry who is amused and equally knowing. "Their genetics will protect them from it." It's the only suggestion he can give but he know it intrigues House while Foreman and Cameron stare at him incredulously. Chase just looks pained, which only confirms Harry's earlier diagnosis of the blonde doctor for Wilson.

"Genetics doesn't stop muscular atrophy induced by heavy drinking," Cameron protests, her blue eyes bemused.

Foreman however knows that Wilson won't elaborate and rolls his eyes before continuing the differential. "It could be MS."

"Or any number of other diseases," Chase interjects, staring at Foreman like the dark eyed man is an idiot. "We should scan the leg and take a biopsy."

"Or you could ask me if I even want to be 'fixed'," Harry says nonchalantly. He meets the trio of Fellows gazes firmly, "look, my leg doesn't hurt and it's not impacting on my life."

"Not yet it's not," Cameron says, her voice shrill and frustrated.

House watches them curiously, wondering what is making the dark haired man tick before concluding that he didn't want to steal the red heads thunder and chances of surviving. "We'll fix your friend first, but afterwards you will submit to an MRI and a biopsy."

Harry rolls his eyes at the older man, shrugging. "Yeah, whatever."

House considers him carefully, nodding sharply once, he then turns his attention to his subordinates. "Well," he says sharply. "You heard the man, get to work. Quicker we can fix carrot top in there, the quicker we can save green eyes in here."

Wilson hides an amused smile as he watches Cameron lead the charge from the room, Chase lingering long enough to shoot Harry one last look before disappearing in a whirl of blue scrubs and white lab coat. His sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor. Harry pulls his jeans back on, his muscles jumping beneath his skin, making his many, many scars writhe like white snakes.

"There's a simpler explanation for the muscle atrophy," House announces, rolling his cane between his hands and regarding Harry with wary eyes. "The damage, the scaring is too great for the blood to get through to the muscles in your leg. This results in limited oxygen and with all the walking you've been doing recently, it's setting off a chain reaction."

Harry nods tiredly. "I know," he accepts the news easily. "Or rather, I suspected."

"You realise that your neuropathy is also a potential cause," House adds seriously, meeting Harry's green gaze with his own intense blue, as if trying to enforce this understanding on him. "It's also a possible factor in your friends sickness."

"I know," Harry nods, reaching for his shirt and tugging it over his head. "I understand."

"And you're okay with this?" House asks, confused. "How can you be okay with this, you should be angry, screaming the place down. There is no cure for this. It's a slow, painful way to die!"

"That's not entirely true," Wilson interrupts, looking between the two men. "We can put him on a regimen of pain medication and physiotherapy. Maybe even remove some of his scarring, increase blood flow to his extremities."

"It won't work," Harry says tiredly. "This isn't the first time I've had this diagnosis." Wilson shoots him a surprised look, stunned. "After I escaped, I went to a private clinic, St. Mungo's; they said there's nothing that can be done. Normal or inventive."

Inventive, Wilson knew meant magical. The man in front of him was slowly dying and there was no cure. Magical or muggle. "There has to be something we can do," he said, running a hand through his hair, the other planted on his hip as he shifted his gaze to House who looks displeased.

"Don't worry about it," Harry shrugs. "I've long since gotten over it. I was given twenty to thirty years, the neuropathy completely dulls the pain and when it's gets worse I'll just medicate myself. It'll be fine."

House nods, resigned. "Okay, I'll write you a script for Vicodin."

"What, you're going to get him hooked on the same meds as you?" Wilson asks incredulously, shocked and dismayed by House's reaction. "Are you insane?"

Harry barks a short laugh, "not insane, but maybe a little unbalanced."

House grins at the green eyed man, "I knew I liked you for a reason."

"Because my ass is tight enough to bounce a nickel off?" Harry rejoined, wrapping an arm around his abdomen and tracing the long scar that ran from hip to arm-pit. It was a comforting motion, like a security blanket.

"Something like that," House agrees, smirking as he limps from the room.

"Unbelievable!" Wilson complains, throwing his arms up in the air. "Both of you, you're insane!"

Harry laughs, real and warmly, "not really, we just don't pretend. There's no need to."

"You're as bad as he is!" Wilson accuses.

"That's me," Harry agrees, widening his eyes and smiling tightly as he leaves. "Bad to the bone."

"Incredible," Wilson groans, his hands on his hips and his head tilted back. "Now there are two of them!"

Harry ducks into Ron's room, well aware of the time that had passed since the MRI and angiogram. Hermione lay with her head pillowed on Ron's arm, fast asleep, though gathering from the rapid eye movement beneath her eyelids, it wouldn't be for long. Harry reached over the bed, smoothing Hermione's hair and startling her enough for the nightmare to be dispelled but not to wake her. Hermione settles back down with a small smile, her arms tightening about Ron's. She lets out a sigh and Harry grabs the spare blanket on the end of Ron's bed and drapes to over her carefully, smiling at the sight of his two best friends together, once more.

Ron looks better, his cheeks flushed with red but dry and clear, leaving no signs of the fever that he's been experiencing for the past nine days. Harry pinches his friends skin on the back of his hand, watching the reaction time of the skin as it's raised up and sinks back down smoothly across his hand. It takes less than a second and Harry smiles at the sight. Ron's not dehydrated, which is to be expected because of the saline drip, but also indicates that the time spent in the hospital is actually better for him than time outside.

Harry looks up at the monitor, noting that his O2 stats are normal while his heartbeat is within normal range if a bit slow. Harry looks around the room, watching the nurses that bustle between the rooms in the corridors, their eyes never sliding into the ICU room, more interested in whatever they were doing outside. Harry drops his hand to grasp Ron's, lining their wrists up and gripping Ron's forearm. Harry let his magic build up, he knows that magically he's clean because otherwise this wouldn't work. Already the effects can be seen, the paralysis having slowed in its progression to the point where it had nearly stopped. Decided, Harry forces his magic through his arm, ignoring the burn of his veins as he does so, and into Ron's body.

Removing his wrist from Ron's, Harry observes the red marker, a bruise really, that had blossomed to twice the size on the underside of his wrist. It's diameter is the same as the width of his wrist and the edge nestles just beneath the palm of his hand and extends part way up his arm. Should House catch sight of this there will be hell to pay but already the effects can be seen on Ron's body. His breathing is easier, his colour better and his heart rate steadier. With every worsening of his own condition, Ron's improved and in Harry's mind, that's a fair trade.

Movement in the door way reveals Cameron and Foreman, the oddly matched duo are serious and determined, one carrying a bag of reddish fluid and the other a clear fluid filled bag. Harry reaches over and shakes Hermione carefully, waking his friend who's startling woke Ron. The redhead lets out a muffled groan and blinks heavily.

"Hi," Cameron greets them, smiling softly. "We're just here to administer some medication. We think Mr. Weasley has bacterial meningitis."

"Or Botulism," Foreman adds, looking apologetic. "We're giving him a broad spectrum antibacterial and an antitoxin."

Hermione stares at them blearily, her eyes watery and sad. "You think?" She asks softly, worriedly.

"We can't be sure." Foreman says, tilting his shoulders in a 'what can you do?' sort of way. "We've run tests that have inconclusive results."

"Run some conclusive tests then!" Hermione hisses, her eyes wide and dark with pained suspicion.

"If we don't give him these, he dies," Foreman states with finale.

"IF you wrong, he dies!" Hermione retorts. "There has to be a way to make sure!"

"Hermione," Harry breathes, grabbing her hand and squeezing tightly. "Let them do their jobs. They know what they're doing."

"Do it," Ron rasps, clearly having heard and understood enough to make a decision.

"Ron!" Hermione protests, turning to him and looking devastated by his decision. "You could die!"

"I could die anyway," Ron says tiredly, letting his head fall back onto his pillow heavily. He gazes at the doctors wearily. "Just do it."

"Okay," Foreman accepts with a short nod, moving over to the IV line and hooking the redhead up to both medications. "We'll know in a few hours if it has an effect."

"And if it's the wrong one?" Hermione asks brittlely.

"Then we take him straight off them both and find another diagnosis," Cameron promises, her eyes soft and gentle.

"Okay," Hermione nods in acceptance. "Okay."

Harry stands, watching the doctors leave. The next six hours are going to be agony, he just knows it.

He's right. Hermione is stressing and fretful, pacing around the bed and sniping at the raven haired man with enough vitriol that it drives him from the room, leaving her to shout after him about not caring. Ron drifts in and out of consciousness, his colour fading fast but Harry doesn't dare give him another magical boost, knowing that doing so could shut down his heart, kidneys or liver. Or something else equally vital. He finds himself in the hospital cafeteria, the itching beneath his skin driving him to pick up a sandwich filled with meat, carbs and little of anything else. He slathers the bread with ketchup and then proceeds to make a mess of the sandwich by shredding it into a goopy pile of flesh and sodden bread. He's never been very good at waiting.

Three hours in, Harry returns to the ICU room, frustration boiling in his veins. Hermione's dragged the two chairs together and is curled up beside Ron's bed, her cheeks tearstained and dirty. He grits his teeth and shrugs in annoyance, he desperately wants to yell and scream like he had in his fifth year but doesn't dare to do so. It will only get him kicked out of the hospital. An hour into the second half of the waiting period Ron begins to seize, his eyes flying open to reveal bloodshot whites and red rimmed corneas. Harry screams for help even as he launches himself at his friend, grabbing the other mans jaw to stop him biting his own tongue off.

Nurses fly in, doctors Cameron and Chase shortly behind. Harry quickly finds out that Chase's specialty is intensive care as the blonde doctor forces a tube down Ron's throat with ease while Foreman helps him restrain a crying Hermione who is staring at Ron's prone body in shock and fear. One hand is fluttering on her lower abdomen and Harry gets a godawful feeling that Hermione's intense feelings are most subjective and selfish than he'd previously thought. It's all he can do to not check, but he refrains from pulsing magic through the witches body, knowing that the woman would be able to feel it if he did so. All this does is affirm his decision to keep Ron alive for one more day. One more month. While the doctors work on a solution.

It's only when Ron stops seizing, Chase stands back, Hermione flings herself across Ron's unconscious body and Foreman and Cameron leave the room looking solemn and apologetic, that Harry realises that he'd screamed for help. That his tension should be relieved from that single, long howl. But he isn't. He feels worse. Frustration and anger being replaced by burning fear like ice in his veins. He wants to cry, but Chase is in his face, talking rapidly about more tests and _is this okay? Are you going to give us your approval and please, sign here because he could die on the table_.

Harry wants to hate him. To hate Ron. To hate Hermione. To hate this hospital, this place, this country. But he can't. So he signs on the dotted line, fingering his lordship ring and hopes to the many non-existent gods on this Earth that someone finally figures out what's wrong with him. With Ron. He runs a hand over his face and stares at the pale face of his best friend and Ron's too skinny girlfriend, there's no point denying it anymore. Its obvious that they are together. That they always had been. Harry wonders if it makes him a bad person that he hates them for it.

Feeling laughter that has nothing to do with humour bubbling in his chest, Harry leaves the room and makes his way to the nurses station and asks for a phone. The number he dials is an old one but one that he knows intimately. It's rare that he ever contacts this person, know that they are the only one able to contact the people who need to know about Ron's condition. It's time to tell the Weasley family that their youngest son/brother is dying in a tiny ICU room in a training hospital in the middle of a country that they hate.

The Lady on the other line picks up immediately, this is her private number and one that she never fails to answer. Only seven people have this number. He is number two, her husband being number one, her son three and her grandsons four and five respectively. Harry wonders if it says something about him that he rates above this woman's children and grandchildren. Probably not though, considering he'd been her favourite magical for far longer than she'd known him. Even if he was shirking his duties by running away.

"_About time you called,_" her voice is strong and determined as she answers and he can almost see her rolls her eyes in exasperation. "_What is it this time?_"


	3. Middle End

_And Again, We Continue On..._

_"About time you called," her voice is strong and determined as she answers and he can almost see her rolls her eyes in exasperation. "What is it this time?"_

. . . .

"Ron Weasley is getting ready for his next great adventure," Harry reports dryly, knowing it will grab her attention.

"_Explain_," this time her voice is whip sharp and surprised.

"At Princeton Plainsbro Teaching Hospital, Ron had a high fever, back pain and a thready heartbeat. The head of diagnostics here, Doctor Gregory House admitted him after Ron had a panic attack and admitted to encroaching paralysis." Harry reports swiftly, knowing that the Lady on the other end of the line appreciates conciseness. "He's just suffered a seizure and has been taken of the medication of his previous diagnoses; meningitis and botulism."

"_Concise_," she is approving, the tapping of a pen on a table top reveals that she's thinking hard. "_You want me to contact the family for you._"

"Please," he agrees. "All of them."

"_George is still in Russia, working for the Mafia there_," she disapproving now. She hates crime syndicates, its even worse though when they're foreign and controlling other governments. "_Ginevra and Neville Longbottom have gotten married and are living in Motueka, just outside Richmond._"

Harry tries to pretend that the news of Ginny and Neville marriage does hurt, that he doesn't feel it like a kick to his stomach that makes him short of breath and rub his sternum. "Okay," he gasps. "Just pass the word along, I know you can. Even if they don't come, they deserve to know."

"_Why should I?_" She asks, her voice coldly curious more than judging. She knows she's just hurt him worse than any kick to the balls or disease that he can experience in the rest of his short life, but she's unsympathetic because she knows that the news may well drive him back into her arms. Where he belongs.

"I think Hermione's pregnant," he announces, throwing her off kilter. "Molly deserves to know."

"_Molly threw you out_," she reminds him, amused. "_But I see your point. I'll do this for you and in return you'll come back and work for me. I need you, Harry._"

Harry sighs heavily, "consider it done." He agrees tiredly, "I can't be active though… my leg…"

"_We'll work something out_," she dismisses. "_Scarlett is getting too big for his boots._"

"He won't last long then," Harry surmises.

"_Unlikely to,_" she agrees.

"Thank you," he says before hanging up, knowing that those words are his dismissal and that there's nothing left to say. He also knows that when she needs to contact him she will be able to get the telephone number for the room with ease. Even if it is ICU.

The nurses manning the station are watching him curiously, clearly wondering who he had called. He was more than unlikely to answer their queries, more because it wasn't worth his life and impending job beneath her iron gripped rule. Learning about his grandfathers job from a bemused government attaché had been bewildering and concerning. Particularly when it became obvious that he was expected to fill in those big, big shoes. That he'd been doing so since he was eleven, if only for the magical world, had been surprising and the icing on the cake. Sometimes it didn't pay to get up in the morning.

Returning to the room, Harry leant against the door jamb and observed his two sleeping friends. This was why he would submit to her rule. This was why he called Molly. This was why he cheapened his own life by feeding Ron his magic. This is why he did everything he did. This, Hermione's head pillowed on Ron's belly, their chests rising and falling in synch as they sleep, dead to the world. Their eyelashes fan across their thin cheeks that are lined before their time. Bodies thin and undernourished, at least twenty kilos under weight. Hands that grip tight, even in the depths of sleep and lips that curve upwards as they anchor each other in the present, their nightmares fading from their minds.

Unlike Harry, Ron and Hermione are healing. Slowly, yes, but the hurts of the mind are less easily shed than those of the body. It's a peaceful sight that inspires pained tears because he knows that for all his promises, his determination and his desperation to live like this. Safe and free of the horrors of the night. He can't. Because unlike Ron and Hermione, it's all he's known. It's all he thinks about in the wee hours of the morning. It's all he can do to not inspire chaos around him, the peaceful setting crawling beneath his skin like thousands of fiery ants that nip and bite at his muscles, bones and organs. Making him want to leap up and pace. To run and never look back. To do something so terrifyingly foolish that it just might kill him.

_He doesn't hate the violence of his younger years_, he realises with sickening horror. _He misses it_.

The anger. The pain. The need to _run, god, we've got to run_. Escape, _leave this place now!_ To see the flash of burning spell fire, to know that his life is in his hands as he ducks, whirls and dances on the battlefield. He's never felt so alive as he had that day. Watching in satisfaction and pleasure as his enemies body drops to the floor, wide eyed and staring. Open mouthed at the heavens. The pleasure of raising his wand, not in oppression but in defence. To stare another human in the eyes and tell them, _not today, never again, no longer_. To know that he is needed and necessary. Harry is a soldier, he is a leader. He has no place in peace time and he has no way of living a life behind a white picket fence with a wife and two point five kids without going utterly, completely and undeniably insane.

_It's always been like this_, he realises. Fleeing Dudley. Hiding from Uncle Vernon. Avoiding Aunt Petunia. Being Dumbledore's personal flying butt-monkey. He knows no other life. And now, standing in a sterile hospital, he watches his two friends that have stuck by him for an unfairly long time. He's dragged them from country to country, state to state, place to place, violence and rage dogging his heels, their heels and he's done what? Driven Ron to near death? Hermione to secrecy and desperately wishing to flee this blatantly abusive relationship? What has he given them but pain and fear while they've given him love, peace and companionship. And he dares get angry with Hermione for wanting to leave?

_She should leave_, he thinks bitterly. She should take Ron, their unborn child and run. Leave him behind. Settle down and live out their lives. Leave him to his madness, his pain, his rage. Leave him alone once more where he can't hurt anyone. Leave him to be another persons weapon. To live as he knows, to be nothing but the killer he was raised to be. There is nothing for them here. Not now, perhaps there never was. Perhaps there never will be.

"Stop it," Hermione's voice cuts through his self flagellation and he looks up to see her and Ron staring at him knowingly. "I know that look. Whatever you're thinking, stop it now. This instant."

"I called Elizabeth," he states, avoiding her gentle probing.

"What?" Hermione asks, horrified. "Why?!"

Harry licks his lips, wondering if he should tell them. "I needed to let your family know about you. She was the quickest and easiest way."

"Harry," Hermione whispers with dread. "_What. Did. You. Do?!_"

"Nothing I shouldn't have done earlier," he replies dismissively.

"Don't. Lie!" Hermione snaps, while Ron tries to sit up, his tube tangling up in his blankets, blue eyes wide and Hermione immediately helps him. "What did you tell her?"

"To tell Molly, to tell the Weasley's that Ron could be dying in a hospital outside Philadelphia City and could she let them know," Harry informs them jerkily, his fingers playing with the long scar on his side.

Hermione closes her eyes tiredly, "in return for what?"

"Me."

Hermione's brown eyes are wide with fear and horror, taking in her dark haired friends defeated profile, knowing that there would be nothing she could do or say to change his mind now. She has lived by his side for thirteen years and knows him very, very well. The War had only exacerbated that closeness, him being so far removed from her was akin to the loss of a limb that she'd never realised was quite so important to her. While Ron just felt despair overwhelm him. The past six years had been spent trying to keep Harry away from Elizabeth. Away from the woman who say him as nothing more than a well bred weapon like his grandfather. A woman who failed to realise that Harry was so far removed from his grandfather that it was not funny.

Harry was brittle and fragile. A wrong touch, a wrong look could shatter him into a thousand pieces. She had not given up the past six years without reason. Without one last ditch attempt to keep her best friend away from an ambitious and controlling woman who would not hesitate to send him into battle once again, uncaring of the results for him or the people he was up against.

"Harry," Hermione rasps., shocked "No, you can't."

"It's done," Harry states with finality. "Drop it Hermione."

"No," she refuses, angry. She stands, one hand still gripping Ron's, the redhead staring at his best friend in despair. "You can't do this. Not now. Not ever. Harry, last time nearly killed you! You cannot be serious!"

Harry slices a hand through the air, cutting her off. "Stop, okay?" He breathes heavily, trying to regain his equilibrium. "Just stop. I'm sorry, I know, it's not fair, I'm going to die that little bit sooner but I'm sorry, but I don't care." He shrugs, ignoring her tortured expression. "I'm sorry."

"But why, Harry?" She whispers. "Why?"

Harry purses his lips and rakes a hand through his hair while the other sits on his hip. He stares at his shoes for a beat like this before sliding his arms around himself, pained. "Because," he whispers. "Because I'm not like you and Ron. I thought I could be, but I'm not. I'm sorry."

"But why?!" Hermione demands, her voice hoarse with withheld tears. "Dammit, Harry, why? What is wrong about peace? We've earned it! You know we have."

"Because I hate it!" Harry snaps, enraged and irrational. Bearing his heart unaware of the trio of doctors behind him, their eyes wide with shock. "Becuase I fucking hate this. Waiting, driving around, pretending that what we went through doesn't matter!"

"It does matter!" Hermione snaps back, her eyes lit like fire. "What, do you miss it or something? The pain, the death, the uncertainty of day to day?!"

"Yes," his rasping whisper is loud in the silence, punctuated by the beeping of Ron's heart monitor. "Yes, okay. I miss it. I miss being useful. I miss being able to do something about the pain, the hate and the fear in the world."

"Harry, we killed people," Hermione says, horrified.

"And save millions of others!" He snaps, "it's a fair trade in my opinion."

"So that's it then, is it?" Hermione snarls, angry and pained by Harry's admission, ignoring Ron's wide eyed stare from his position in the bed, the white tube in his mouth effectively silencing him. "That's it. No peace for you, you've given up. It's all over," she rakes a hand through her wild curls and glares at Harry, frustrated and irritated. "You're done."

Harry straightens, looking like the soldier he always was, had been and always would be. Straight backed and proud. "Yeah, that's it."

"Better to be a murderer than to be safe in your bed at home with a wife and that family you've always professed to wanting," Hermione snips prissily.

"It's boring," Harry admits, shrugging uncomfortably. "Peacetime is boring. I don't know what to do with myself. Hermione," he stares at her earnestly. "I've never lived peacefully. Never, not in my twenty four years on this Earth. Not once have I been able to take that suburban grace for granted like you could. I was always running, hiding and fleeing for my life. From the age of two I knew nothing but pain, fear and uncertainty, of have you forgotten the scars across my back?!"

"You could try!" Hermione pleads, unable to truly understand.

"I have!" Harry retorts, "I can't do it and at least I'm not George and operating for the fucking mafia!"

"George is sick!" Hermione shrills, angry and fearful. "You're selling your soul if you work for Elizabeth!"

"She's the fucking Queen, not a mob boss!" Harry snarls, enraged.

"She runs England in an undemocratic manner," Hermione sighs, tiredly running a hand down her face. "This is useless, you've made up your mind, nothing I can do will change it, will it?"

"Why do you ask questions you know the answer to," Harry says rhetorically.

"Wait, you know the Queen?" An Australian voice interrupts and Harry spins around to see Foreman, Cameron and Chase staring at him sadly (Cameron), suspiciously (Foreman) and in awe (Chase).

"Know and occasionally have tea with," Harry deadpans.

Chase grins, widely and brightly, "I'm not a monarchist but that, there, is awesome."

"So glad you approve," Harry drawls.

"Yeah, a Queen that secretly runs half the world," Hermione mutters bitterly. "Meet her new dogsbody. Anyone insults her, he's the go to guy for assassination."

"It's not like that," Harry groans. "We've had this conversation before. She's the worlds best mediator giving her some sway among even countries she doesn't know too well."

"Dictatorial," Hermione coughs, her eyes wide and innocent.

"Whatever," Harry shrugs, rolling his shoulders. "What's done is done."

"I can't believe that you know the Queen!" Chase is in awe still, looking like a five year old with a rand new puppy. All wriggles and bright smiles. "What is she like?"

"A Queen," Harry says, watching the doctors fan out, Cameron carefully taking Hermione's arms and pulling her away from the bed while Foreman and Chase are checking Ron's stats and making notations on a clipboard. "What are you doing?"

"We have booked Mr. Weasley into a Lumbar Puncture this afternoon, we're just making sure he can make it." Cameron replies, watching her colleagues interestedly.

Hermione frowns, "a Lumbar Puncture? Isn't that where you shove a hollow needle between two vertebra and drain fluid from the spinal column?"

"Yep," Chase agreed, checking Ron's eyes, throat and nose, smiling slightly. "Your lymph nodes have gone down nicely."

"Lymph nodes?" Harry asks, confused.

Hermione rolls her eyes at the raven haired male. "Ron was diagnosed with pneumonia shortly after you left the first time. The pink bag is filled with antibiotics to combat it."

"I see," Harry murmurs, feeling peeved that Hermione and Ron had failed to tell him about the pneumonia. Not to mention irritated that he hadn't seen the bag himself and thought to question it being there. He feels like a failure.

Cameron lets Hermione go, the brunette woman tossing herself back into her chair and snatching up her boyfriends hand. Foreman and Chase have left and are discussing the revelation that Harry works for the Queen of England while the auburn haired doctor is watching Harry curiously. Harry meets her stare blankly, wondering what is going on behind those blue-grey eyes. She smiles and swishes past him, hands in the pockets of her lab coat and Harry goes back to leaning against the wall, the events of the past twenty-four hours catching up with him. The afternoon can't come quick enough, Harry just wants Ron to get better.

Hermione takes charge not half an hour after the doctors have left them alone again, settling Harry into the two chairs she'd set up earlier and standing guard over him as he slept. The bruises circling his eyes are a dark purple and stand out like bruises against his translucent skin. She wonders what drove him to calling Elizabeth now, after all this time. Wonders if Harry is going to escape this time, whole and sane. She doesn't believe him when he says he misses the violence. She can't understand how any sane person could miss warfare, knowing what she does about love, loss and torture. It doesn't make sense to her. It should make sense to him and she wonders if one day all they'll see of him is a pine wood box covered in the Union Jack, a wreath of red, red roses on the lid.

Ron is silent, his blue eyes, deep and unfathomable like the sea, watch her from his position on the bed. She wonders if he worries about Harry like she does. Wonders if Ron misses the violence that has characterised and dogged their lives for the last decade and a bit. She hopes not because if he does, she knows she won't be able to deal with it. Fluttering hands brush her lower belly, the warmth that sits there like a fire comforting her in her discomfort and fear. Ron watches her, still oblivious, clearly not remembering that night three months ago in Ohio, drunk out of their minds and slipping, fumbling, clutching and gripping. Harry in the bed next to them as they sloppily kiss and cry, losing themselves in that age old rhythm that had resulted in the tiny heartbeat in her womb.

Hermione doesn't regret, not really. She knew what would happen. Knew that they had forgotten to use a condom or any kind of birth control. Had known the moment Ron had slipped from her body, his breath thick, sticky and stinking of bourbon on her neck. Had felt the fire that had erupted there, the fusion of new life from her egg and his seed. The next generation that she will prevent from being roped into wars not their own. The next generation that she holds so much hope for. She turns from Ron's deep blue gaze and stares at Harry's pitiful form, curled up across two chairs, a light blue hospital blanket thrown across him, a white pillow beneath his head. Her daughters godfather, should he accept.

Morning slides into afternoon as the shadows in their room lengthen and darken. Outside the skies turn grey and heavy with the promise of rain and Hermione can't help but feel this to be an omen, a portent of what is to come. Harry is awake now, his head on his bony knees, blanket draped across his shoulders and body, bare feet sticking out beneath the hems of his ragged jeans and the pale blue blanket. Ron is asleep, red hair blazing against the white of his linens, the steady beat of his monitor comforting in the silence.

They come silently and solemnly, Harry and Hermione ushered from the room and stood guard over by Foreman and Cameron while Chase wakes Ron up and rolls him onto his side. Hermione plasters herself to the window, watching with desperate and sad eyes, watching her boyfriend clench his teeth and stare back, just as desperate and sad, as the handsome blonde doctor slides the thick steel needle into his spine and drains a test tube full of spinal fluid.

Then they leave once more, just as silent and solemn, perhaps suspecting that the trio are not as able as they to rustle up optimism and are instead silently perched on the edge of a chasm. The black depths below their feet yawning wide and deep, daring them to leap on down, to let everything go and just fall free. Hermione curls up beside Ron, Harry on the other side, and they wait, hands joined in the middle and they draw comfort and love from each other. It's not sexual. Not between them. It's familial, love, caring and compassion. They are too close for true comfort most days, but on days like today when the black dog roams free between them, the closeness is a joy, not a burden.

Ron is asleep when they return in the morning, this time House is with them, his face grave and looking like it's been carved from marble. Chase and Cameron flank him while Foreman lingers behind, they all look compassionate and sympathetic and Harry feels his stomach sink to the bottom of his toes. Hermione too, turns pale and wane, and she closes her eyes in dread and fear, knowing that whatever's coming isn't going to be fun or easy to hear. Harry turns to Ron, gently shaking him awake and sliding from the bed to stand at his friends bedside, one hand resting on the redheads shoulder, the other wrapped about his body and stroking the scar that runs from shoulder to hip down his side. Drawing comfort where there is none to be had.

"You have Guillain-Barre syndrome," House announces without preamble. His blue eyes intensely focused on the dynamic between the three people before him, wondering just what it was, because the tortures a pretty tale but not the whole story, that can bring three different people together so tightly and smoothly. It's like him and Wilson, but it's not, because their relationship is basically co-dependant and freaky, while his and Wilson's is healthy. He thinks. Maybe. He doesn't know.

"What is… g-ee-ya-ainn ba-ar syndrome? Harry stumbles over the foreign words uncomfortably, they sound heavy and clunky on his tongue and not for the first time does he wish that he could speak and second language.

"It's a rare but very serious autoimmune disease where the immune system attacks healthy nerve cells in the periphery nervous system," Cameron explains because this is her area. Her love. It's interesting and horrible and she can't quite deal with those serious blue, green and brown eyes that are focused on her, frightened and tear filled.

"Basically the immune system, which is supposed to protect you from infections and diseases, get supercharged and confused and thinks that your nervous system in an intrude and attacks it." Chase supplies, stepping in swiftly as Cameron chokes and falters. He can understand that though, she's always been sensitive to other peoples issues, even if he finds it to be stupid and worthless most of the time. "Had your nervous system not been damaged by the terrorists during the nineties it would have been easier to pick up and treat, but because it was," Chase shrugs, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, sympathetic if not empathetic.

"But it is treatable, right?" Hermione asks, terrified, a hand pressed to her lower abdomen and House frowns at her before his eyes widen in shock.

"In eighty-five percent of cases it's very treatable," Foreman assures her. "But in Ron's case, it may have been left too long. There may be some long term damage to his nervous system which can result in a lack of manoeuvrability."

"So what do we do?" Hermione questions, her free hand tangling with Ron's and squeezing tightly in a death grip.

Cameron shakes her head slightly, clearing her thoughts and rallies herself, smiling slightly, tightly, painfully. "We've signed him up for physiotherapy where he should regain the majority of his mobility back, although he may need leg bracers and pain medication for the rest of his life."

"We've also decided to utilise plasmapheresis, which is a treatment designed to remove the antibodies attacking the nerve system by filtering the blood through a special machine before returning the blood back to the body," Foreman continues quietly.

"And if that doesn't work?" Hermione asks, still worried but soothed by the confidence displayed by the doctors in front of her.

"There is a new treatment available if the plasmapheresis and physiotherapy don't work as well as they should." Foreman states confidently, "it's called Intravenous Immunoglobulin, where immunoglobulin is injected into the patient which combats the antibodies. It's new but looks promising and apparently has fewer complications attached to the treatment."

"Okay," Hermione nods, still squeezing Ron's hand and occasionally glancing at Harry who stood silently on the other side of the bed, his eyes serious and grave. "Okay," she says again, centring herself. "What are the complications then?"

"Well, Guillain-Barre affects your nervous system," Foreman says while Cameron visibly restrains herself from gathering Hermione into a tight hug and Chase pretends to not be bored by this flow of information that he already knows. He doesn't even guess at what House is doing, his blue eyes never faltering from his observation of the trio in front of them, curious and bemused by their stoic stance to the disastrous news being given to them. "So Ron may experience further paralysis until the treatments kick in, and even when they do there may be some lingering weakness in his limbs; trouble breathing as the brain may have difficulty sending the signals to the lungs that control their movement; problems with going to the toilet, again for the same reasons; and heart and blood pressure problems.

"That's the bad news," Foreman states, maintaining his calm in the face of the brunettes horror and dismay. "The good news is that you can expect good results from the treatments available. Like I said, eighty-five percent of people recover almost perfectly, and while this isn't curable now, it may well be in the future."

"What are the chances of relapse?" Harry asks, his voice funny and croaking as he stares at the dark eyes doctor who had taken over the delivery of the bad news. Understandable really, since Cameron was close to tears herself, House was more interested in him, and Chase was disinterested in everything around him. Harry actually wonders what drove Chase into medicine if he hates it so badly and suspects parental pressure more than anything else. The blonde is oddly meek for someone who presents a façade of disinterest most of the time.

"About ten percent of cases relapse, but continued treatment will take care of that," Foreman says, shrugging slightly.

"Okay," Hermione accepts, twisting around to press a hard kiss to Ron's forehead. "You're going to be okay, Ron," she's smiling wetly, tremors shaking her frame. "You're going to be okay."

Harry reaches across the bed and pulling both of his friends into a tight hug briefly before following the doctors from the room. House is far up the corridor, Wilson waiting for him by the lifts while Chase has been sidelined by a harried looking nurse, his hand drifting up to his stethoscope and his face becoming a mask of concentration as he follows her down the hall and into another room. Cameron and Foreman watch the intensivist go with curious interest before taking the stairs down to the clinic three at a time.

"House!" Harry barks, loping down the hall and scooting into the elevator just before the doors slide shut. "Our agreement," he reminds the bemused doctor, ignoring Wilson who watches him curiously. "You treat Ron, you fix him, which you have," Harry states. "And then I'm all yours to satisfy your curiosity."

"You remember," House muses, interested, his eyes sharp. "I thought you'd back out of our agreement."

"I'm not you," Harry snarks, having more than a slight suspicion regarding the other man and his abilities to accept his own pain and the treatment of his bad leg.

House sneers slightly, "you don't know me."

"Maybe not," Harry agrees darkly. "But I have my suspicions."

House grunts noncommittally, ignoring Wilson's delighted grin, knowing that the other man thought he'd met his match in the dark haired, green eyed man beside him. House almost thinks that Wilson's a little strange to be getting off on their interaction until he reminds himself that Harry is interesting and that he himself is getting off on trying to figure out just what is hindering the other mans movement. It could be a psychosomatic limp, but that's unlikely and it's not until he gets to open the leg up and remove most of the scar tissue that he'll know for certain. Which makes this _fun_.

"It is honestly scary, just how similar you two are," Wilson comments as he follows both limping men from the lift and through the lobby, watching House angle towards the clinic and Cuddy's office.

"It's like we were split up at birth," Harry snarks. "Or, it would be but for the obvious age difference making him closer to that of my fathers."

"Where is your father?" House wonders, shoving the glass doors of the clinic open and ignoring Nurse Brenda's calls for him to _do your clinic hours already, House, we're swamped in here_!

Harry stiffens slightly as he follows the older man through the wood and glass doors into a fancy looking office where a woman sat behind a desk, her curly hair pulled into a bun, and writing out various forms while looking completely exasperated at House's presence. "Dead," Harry answers, surprising the woman behind the desk with his apparent blunt manner.

"House, Wilson?" She questions in confusion, "why are you here and who is this?"

"We're here for the view," House snarks, leering mockingly at the woman's practically exposed chest, her low-cut blouse doing little to hide her attributes. The woman stood and smoothed her blouse, drawing attention to her thin, fit figure and Harry smirks at the sight, enjoying the sight.

"You were right," Harry says lightly, crossing his arms across his chest, on hand stroking his scar that ran down his side. "It's a lovely view."

"Oh god," she groans, closing her eyes in exasperation. "There are two of them!"

"I'm the better looking one though," House snips, shooting Harry an amused look. "And eyes off, she's mine."

"Oh please," Harry snorted, rolling his eyes. "You couldn't hit her even if you tried."

"Why not?" House is mockingly offended but clearly curious.

Harry smirks, lengthening his side enough that his leg didn't give him too much trouble and holds out a hand for the woman to shake, when she took it, he swiftly flipped it over and brushed a kiss across her knuckles, knowing it would piss House off no end. "Because," he breathes, feathering his breath across her hand watching her try and refrain from blushing but failing to do so as pink spread across her high cheek bones. "She clearly has fantastic taste."

"Oh god," Wilson mutters from his position by the door. "This is awful."

Harry laughs freely, unable to help himself as he straightens from his fluid bow over the woman hand and shoots the oncologist a dirty grin. "Jealous are you, Wilson?" He asks smugly, "I'm all for sharing if you're interested."

Wilson chokes and pales rapidly, his eyes huge with shock. "Uh!"

Harry laughs again and winks at the beautiful woman who had still yet to drop his hand, "Harry Potter," he introduces himself, amused.

"Lisa Cuddy," she replies, apparently highly amused and entertained by his behaviour. "And why are you here, Mr. Potter?"

"Harry, please," he insists charmingly, playing it up for her. "And I have no idea why, Doctor House was most insistent though."

House rolls his eyes as Cuddy turns her interested and suspicious gaze onto him. "Mr. Potter has bad scarring on his left leg resulting in poor circulation and muscular pain."

"You want to admit him into surgery," Cuddy surmises, recognising House's desire to fix a patient at the expense of the patients of freedom.

"Yep," House agrees. "He promised me I could do whatever I want with him."

"Did not," Harry mutters mulishly. "I said you could 'fix' me, not do what you like with me."

"Your reasoning behind this freeing a maniac upon your body?" Cuddy asks him concerned and surprised, her blue eyes staring at the raven haired man.

"I don't have a death wish," Harry replies, amused but her concern.

"No," Wilson agrees from his position by the door, looking entertained by the rapid fire conversation. "You just have no sense."

"Wilson, I'm hurt," Harry smirks darkly. "Are we breaking up already?"

House barks a short laugh, amused. "That's my line, Potter."

"I had my suspicions," Harry agrees cheekily.

Wilson flounders, horrified. "We're not…" He stammers, "we're not gay!"

House smirks wickedly, twisting around to stare his best friend in the eye, leaning on his cane. "It hurts me when you lie like that, Jimmy."

"House!" Wilson protests, dumbfounded.

Cuddy, watching this interaction between the three men, is unable to do much else but tip her head back and laugh. Harry grins smugly satisfied while House flicks his eyes between the three other people in the room, weighing up his chances at being able to continue the joke. Wilson just stumps from Cuddy's office, grumbling about idiots, stupid friends, and unhelpful bosses.

"Bye Willy!" Harry shouts after the oncologist, getting the rude finger in reply. He turns to House and smirks, "I think he likes me."

Cuddy rolls her eyes, calm once more. "Yes, that must be it."

"It's not sexual harassment if you enjoy it," House quips sending Harry into low chuckles, grinning broadly himself.

"So, surgery," Cuddy cuts in, sliding back into her chair with a sigh of pleasure, leaning back and observing the two men across from her.

"On the left leg," House agrees, settling into a semblance of seriousness. "Like I said, the scarring is so bad that I suspect that it's restricting the blood flow and causing intense pain for the patient."

"I have neuropathy," Harry shoots House a bemused glance. "There is no pain."

"Shut up," House retorts, ignoring Cuddy's eye roll and Harry's amusement. "Once inside I recommend the surgeon taking out any damaged muscle."

"You think there's damage?" Cuddy says slowly, mulling over the implications. "What, there was an infarction in the thigh muscle that has gone undetected until now? Even with neuropathy Harry would feel the pain, it had you on the floor screaming for morphine."

House glares at her, furious. "It's not an infarction."

"What the hell is an infarction?" Harry demands, not liking where this is going.

Cuddy looks at him, her gaze sharp and painful, "it's a blood clot that restricts blood flow to the leg. It can appear anywhere, House's infarction was in his leg, which is why he's the grumpy, misogynistic arse that stands next to you today."

Harry rolls his eyes, "of course it is." He sighs and returns his gaze to the diagnostician, still stroking his scar running the length of his side. "When can you book me in?"

"Do you have health insurance?" Cuddy asks, cutting across House's answer.

Harry doesn't even blink in her direction before answering, his eyes steady on House's blue gaze. "No, but I can pay my and Ron's bills."

"How?" Cuddy asks, annoyed.

Harry finally looks at her, pulling out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and tugging out an unlimited credit card that was linked to his vault back in England. He had close to five billion galleons in the vault and that would be very, very hard to blow through, particularly considering the shares and investments he had in his name thanks to Griphook. The goblin may loathe him, but had been more than happy to consolidate his wealth and make it available to him in the muggle world. For a small fee, of course.

Cuddy stares at the card with barely hidden desire and greed before closing her eyes, pinching the bridge of her nose and waving the pair off. "Fine, fine," she allows, exhaling exasperatedly. "Go do your thing."

"He's not a thing," House snarks, bemused by the gold card that Harry was waving around like it meant nothing. The man didn't look rich yet he had, likely, the same kind of cash as Chase did. Then again, Chase didn't look rich, just colour blind. "And you, come with me, we're getting you admitted and then you're mine, I tell you, mine to do with as I wish!" House let out a mad scientist laugh, pulling the other man behind him enthusiastically.

"Don't kill the man, House," Cuddy cautions as she watches them leave, bemused by their apparent friendliness and companionship. House was never this open unless Wilson or she were around, that Potter has slid beneath is skin with such ease is something of a concern for the Director. She wonders if she should mention to him that she'd scheduled him to lecture next week? Further consideration makes her decide that she won't, not yet anyway. It will give him less time to come up with a suitable excuse. Decided, she returns her attention to the task of managing the overflowing paperwork in front of her and curses ever becoming the Head of Medicine at a teaching hospital.

House drags Harry into the Witherspoon wing and has the nurses set the other man up on an IV of saline and nutrient drips, plying him with food while the raven haired man struggles into a hospital gown of pale green. He smirks at the sight of bright green eyes beneath messy black hair against a backdrop of white linen sheets. It makes the man look like a teenager, tiny and helpless to his every whim. It's a heady feeling. A ten minute phone call during the health and background check had Harry Potter booked into surgery later that day, just before the theatres close for the day and House feels smugly accomplished with everything as he watches the younger man refuse the food that the nurses try and give him until House mentions his surgery that afternoon.

"Enjoy yourself," he says as he limps from the room leaving Harry to the nurses dubious intentions.

Harry glares at the departing doctors back and feels mutinously petulant as the nurses cluck over his obvious scarring, poor health and thin body. He wants to scream but doesn't. He's not hurting, just frustrated. And angry. And worried for Ron, who he hasn't seen since early that afternoon. And peeved at House for leaving him here. And annoyed at Hermione, who hasn't seemed to realise that he was missing yet. And just generally pissed in general.

The anaesthetist swings by an hour before the surgery, prepping him for the anaesthetic that he'll be put under before going under the knife. He's handed a black marker to write on the leg their not supposed to be touching and he leaves a deliberately insulting message that he knows will get back to the gimpy diagnostician within moments. Sooner if the man's watching the surgery. Then the nurses come, wheeling his bed through corridors and hallways towards the operating theatre that will be used to house him while he gets cut up and fiddled with. He goes under with a small smirk on his face at the cooing nurses reaction to the heavily knotted scarring on his left leg, her brown eyes shocked by the sight.


	4. End

_As it Once Began..._

_Then the nurses come, wheeling his bed through corridors and hallways towards the operating theatre that will be used to house him while he gets cut up and fiddled with. He goes under with a small smirk on his face at the cooing nurses reaction to the heavily knotted scarring on his left leg, her brown eyes shocked by the sight._

_. . . ._

He wakes up the next morning to Wilson and House bickering by his bedside. His body is heavy with sleep and he feels lethargic enough that he doesn't fight the pull of sleep once more, shooting House, who is watching him expectantly, a knowing look.

The next time he wakes it's late morning and Wilson's no longer there but House is, his feet propped up on Harry's bed, his thumbs dancing across his gameboy as he fights a loosing battle against a boss level. Harry feels vindicated by the sight, slightly bitter in knowing that the other man is a better man, a better human than he is. Able to save lives. To heal them. Harry can't do that, he can only destroy because all he is, is a soldier. A weapon to be pointed at an enemy and released when the time is right. And it makes him bitter and angry and disappointed because this isn't what he wanted for his life, but it's all he's going to get and he's okay with it, but it doesn't make him happy.

"Your surgery went well," House comments, his blue eyes darting briefly to Harry's face and back again, focussed more on his game than his patient. "I was right. The scarring resulted in a lack of blood flow to your musculature, starving your thigh muscles of oxygen. The reason behind the hurting was the slow death of your muscles and their rotting in your body. You would have died had it been left till later."

"But I'm okay now?" Harry asks, bored and not particularly interested.

House sets his gameboy down and meets Harry's dull gaze. "Physically, yes. I did an MRI of you while you were out and there is nothing physically wrong with you. No lesions, no tumours or cancerous growths. Physically, you are now perfect."

"Physically," Harry repeats slowly, wondering what House is getting at.

House shrugs, disinterested. "It is my medical opinion that you require intense psychological therapy, which I have booked you into, as well as physical therapy, which I have also signed you up for." He picks up his gameboy once more, "I had a phone call from a very interesting woman in the United Kingdom, inquiring after you. Naturally doctor-patient confidentiality prevented me from specifying, but I was able to express my deep concerns for your mental health, particularly in light of the work she has lined up for you."

"And?" Harry drawls, more interested now.

"She decided to seek help elsewhere, particularly in light of your physical disabilities and scarring," House said, jabbing at the buttons on his gameboy. Cursing as he lost, House set it down once more meeting Harry's bemused gaze. "Such a shame that, you're out of a job for the rest of your life, what will you do now?"

Harry watches the man stand and limp from the room, stunned. He was free. Completely and utterly free. It has been three days since that phone call with Elizabeth, well, technically since it happened close to midnight it's more like two and a bit days, but the point stands. Harry was no longer beholden to the Queen, free of her iron grip and controlling gaze. House may have betrayed his condition which he had been concealing from the woman for the past seven years, but Harry couldn't be more grateful. What would he do now though? Ron and Hermione would be getting married and having their two point five kids and that would leave Harry where?

Like a lightning bolt it struck him. Stunned and gasping he stared blankly at the opposite wall. He could do whatever he liked. Whatever fascinated him. Whatever made him curious, interested and happy. It was a novel experience for a man who had lived the past twenty four years doing what other people wanted or liked. Even when he had fled Britain it had more to do with avoiding his responsibilities to the country of Great Britain and trying to help Ron and Hermione by getting them away from the poisonous memories that stalked them back in dreary old Blighty.

He throws his head back and laughs loud and long, revelling in the glorious knowledge that his life was his own to do what he wished. It was his. All his. He owed House big time and he scans the room, his eyes landing on a pair of wooden, underarm crutches and then on his IV stand. He throws his blankets off of him and carefully stands, ignoring the blazing heat burning beneath his bandages and uses his IV pole to hobble over tot he crutches and, picking up a crush for his right arm, limps out of the room.

He makes his way down the hallway, ignoring the staring eyes that follow him, nurses trying to waylay him and Wilson shouting behind him. He stabs at the button that marks 'down' next to the elevators and waits impatiently for the doors to slide open with a muffled 'ding'. Wilson hops into the lift with him, his brown eyes concerned as he takes in Harry's fevered eyes and fervently determined expression.

"Harry?" Wilson questions, confused and worried. "What are you doing? You shouldn't be up and about yet. You've just come out of surgery!"

Harry ignores him, his teeth clenched and his eyes set on the doors of the elevator as he presses the button labelled 'first floor' and stands there, silently, as the lift drops downwards carrying him to the lobby.

"Harry? Are you okay?" Wilson has his penlight out now, flicking its beam across Harry's unresponsive eyes noting the rapid dilation and response to the intruding light.

"Please stop," Harry states as the elevator reads: _Third Floor_.

Two minutes later Harry is hobbling across the lobby on the First Floor, swinging his crutch and rolling his IV pole, his left leg not touching the floor while his right leg still reads with the rude message that he'd written eight hours later for the surgeon operating on him. Wilson keeps pace beside him, steadying him whenever he falters and trying to understand the other mans determination to reach Cuddy's office. Because it is clear that's where Harry is going.

A nurse snatches the clinic doors open as they approach, staring at the determined but clearly in pain man as he wheels/hobbles/limps past her towards the Dean of Medicines office, Wilson following behind closely, clearly concerned. They hit a snag once they reach Cuddy's office, carpet not being made for the wheeling of an IV pole but Harry determinedly just lifts it up and struggles across the intervening space, Cuddy watching him approach with shocked surprise. She leaps up and circles her desk, pulling out a chair and with Wilson's help, sits the green eyed man in it. Wilson wastes no time in checking the mans pulse and general health, wondering how he could escape the Witherspoon ward so easily.

"A billion dollars," Harry rasps, looking a mixture of pained and elated.

Cuddy stares at him, confused. "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's what I want to donate!" Harry snaps, his eyes fevered as he stares at Cuddy in determination.

Cuddy staggers backwards, "you want to donate a million dollars to this hospital?" She asks, a minute of hopeful and worried.

"No," Harry shakes his head, still panting for breath. "A. Billion."

This time Cuddy hears the difference and she stares at the man in utter shock. "Why?" She asks, staring at him.

"House," Harry gasps, batting away Wilson's nervous hands that are continually wandering from pulse point to pulse point in blatant concern. "I owe him my life, my mobility and my friends life."

"But that's…" Cuddy stops herself from arguing with difficulty.

"All I ask is that a portion of that money goes to to House and his department," Harry says, his breathing steadying.

Cuddy sinks into her chair, stunned. "This is insane," she mutters, meeting Wilson's bewildered gaze.

"You're right," Harry agrees, missing the swift disappointment crossing Cuddy's face. "That's not enough. Triple it."

Cuddy collapses backwards in a faint, murmuring the number breathily, stunned. "Three billion?"

Harry nods in determination, reaching for her phone. "I'll make the call, what's the extension line for outside the hospital?"

Cuddy barely manages to string the words together as she watches Harry press the buttons on her telephone rapidly and hold a rapid fire conversation in a sharp tongued language that she doesn't recognise. Harry looks grimly satisfied when he finally hangs up and meets her gaze with determination.

"That was the manager of my accounts, according to him I can spare five billion, apparently not touching your accounts for seven years and leaving it to a tiny man with more business sense than common sense wracks up insane amount of money," Harry shrugs. "Who knew?"

"Who are you?" Cuddy asks him, still struggling with the knowledge that her hospital now had FIVE BILLION dollars to play with. It made Vogler's donation look like a pittance in comparison.

Harry rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, "well, I've not been entirely honest, I'll admit that."

"Who are you?" She demands, worry creating a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Was this blood money being given to her hospital? Was this money attached to drugs or worse? Was she signing a deal with a whole 'nother kind of devil for this money?

"My full name is Harold James Black Potter, Lord of the most Ancient and Noble Houses of Black and Potter," Harry says so nonchalantly that for a moment, Cuddy wonders if he's lying to her, until she sees the ring on his finger, engraved with obsidian, emerald and ruby set into a heavy gold band. It's gaudy and gauche and could only belong to an old family line and in that moment Cuddy realises that she's sitting across from a genuine old world Lord.

"Lord?" She whispers numbly, the shocks of the day piling up in such a way that she's becoming somewhat immune to them now. "God."

Harry shrugs sheepishly, "this is why I don't mention it."

"I'll say," Wilson says in a stunned voice, reminding them of his presence. "And you're really just giving Princeton Plainsbro five billion dollars to use?"

"Not like it's doing anything else," Harry shrugs.

"What did House do?" Cuddy wonders, staring unseeingly at the man in front of her.

"He saved my life," Harry replies, gratitude oozing from his voice.

"You know what, I don't care," Cuddy says, realisation leaking tears from her eyes. "We can have a whole new wing, dedicated to you of course, and new surgeries, new equipment, new beds and more staff!" Cuddy rattles this off excitedly, "I will never complain about that impossible and annoying man again! I could kiss him!" She spins around in her chair, relief making her giddy.

Wilson laughs and pulls Harry into a hug, ignoring the mans flinch at the contact. He knows how hard Cuddy works to make everything stretch, this money could not have come at a better time. They are desperately short staffed and in dire need of new equipment, Harry's donation takes care of both problems as well as the need for a new facility/wing that Cuddy has been planning for the past eight years. A wing she never expected to see during her time here. A wing complete with fifteen thousand news beds and enough jobs to draw in more specialists and doctors and nurses who are the best in their fields.

Cuddy is still crying and hugging Harry ten minutes later when House staggers in, peeved at receiving a page from various nurses describing his patients disappearance. Even more peeved when he heard that it was Wilson aiding his newly operated-on patients escape. Cuddy spots House in the doorway and runs over to him, thanking him, apologising and generally making a fool of herself while the pissed diagnostician tries to understand the garble of words being blurted out of the crying Dean of Medicines mouth.

"What is going on?!" House demands, bewildered.

Harry waves from his, soggy, position in the chair in front of Cuddy's desk. "Just donated some money," he informs the other man. "Doctor Cuddy is apparently a little happy."

"A little," Wilson breathes, in the chair beside Harry still trying to believe the good fortune that had just landed in their lap. "Five billion is not a little amount of money."

"Five billion?" House complains mockingly, "what do I get?!"

"Part of our agreement is that ten million of that goes to your department," Harry says, stroking the scar that ran beneath his arm to his hip. Seeking comfort in the face of the doctors shrewd gaze.

House stares in surprise and then he grins. "I knew I liked you for a reason," he turns to Cuddy who is trying to dry her eyes and look dignified after having just hugged and cried over House. "So, will you sleep with me now?"

Cuddy barks a short laugh, rolling her eyes. "I'm grateful, House," she agrees sardonically. "But not that grateful."

"But Mo-om!" House whines, leaning on his cane pathetically. "I saved the donors life! Surely I get some gratitude thrown my way."

"I'll buy you a new TV," Cuddy replies, sitting behind her desk once more and tugging her blouse straight.

House grins, "okay!"

Harry laughs breathily, shaking his head and standing with difficulty, using the IV pole for leverage. "My work here is done," he says and Wilson snatches up the crutch from where it fell and passes it to the hospitals biggest donor with a smile.

"Come on then, my little trendsetter," House mocks, chivvying his patient from the room. "Mommy may not care about your health, but I do and you've only just gotten out of surgery." Cuddy doesn't hear the exchanged because she's chattering excited down the telephone line, making plans with an architect to meet next week. House rolls his eyes, amused more than anything, knowing just how much the Hospital Director had been waiting for this moment.

Harry limps after House, his leg throbbing so much that he suspects that if he didn't have a damaged nervous system that he's be on the floor screaming the hospital down. Twenty minutes later they're back in Harry's room, House quickly sedating him before checking on the raven haired mans leg and scowling darkly at the tearing and damage done to the leg in the brief time that he'd been walking.

"Idiot," House grumbles, paging for a surgeon to come and fix the damage before limping from the room to mull over his most recent discovery about Harry Potter, Wilson following close behind him.

Five days later Harry was well enough to be discharged and was gifted with his very own personal cane, courtesy of Cuddy in appreciation for his insane donation that had arrived into the Hospitals bank accounts three days ago, the actual total closer to six billion as apparently the bank manager had done the donation in pounds and the exchange rate favoured the Brits currently. Harry grinned at the mahogany cane with an etched silver handle as he stood beside House and mockingly leaned on it in direct copy of House's own preferred pose.

House rolled his eyes and accompanied the other man through the halls towards Ron's newest room, the redhead having being down graded from ICU to the Carnegie Wing one floor down. The reasoning for the transfer became immediately apparent from the gathering of redheads in the hallways, and House was swift to bulk and flee the area, leaving Harry to slowly limp towards the room, ignoring the curious gazes that follow his progress.

Ron is sitting up in bed when Harry arrives, Hermione at his side laughing and clutching his hand tightly, they both look healthier than ever as they converse with Percy and Charlie who stand on the other side of the bed, grinning widely. Molly is at the end of the bed, still self-righteous and annoying despite her apparently softened tone and apologetic stance. Arthur sits beside her, his hand resting on Ron's ankle, his arm wrapped around a tiny blonde child, her eyes sky blue and the perfect mix of her parents who lean against the wall opposite the bed, their arms wrapped around each other. Bill's still scarred and pained looking but he looks more relaxed as Fleur leans into his, her head on his chest.

Hermione spots him first, taking in, wide eyed, the pained stance, the drawn lines on his face and the way he leans heavily on the silver and mahogany cane in front of him. She stands hesitantly, guilt and apology flowering like a shadow across her face and Harry realises that she believed him to have fled the hospital, leaving her and Ron alone to deal with the influx of Weasley's around them. Ron too, notices him, his blue eyes widening with shock and dismay, his voice blurting out a single word in his surprise, on hand stretching out to the shorter, darker haired man in silent plea.

"Harry!"

Harry smiles, waving slightly as the rest of the Weasley's turn and stare at him, taking in his healthier body and fuller features and the way that he is clearly disabled and leaning heavily on his new cane. "Hello, Ron, how are you doing?" He asks, ignoring the stunned silence that settles around them like a blanket, heavy and stifling.

"I'm good, the treatments working," Ron is excited but curious, his eyes wandering along Harry's bowed body with concern. "Where have you been?"

"Doctor House noticed my proclivity to rubbing my leg as if I were in pain," Harry answers slowly. "Which I was but I refused treatment until I knew you were okay. They had to remove a majority of the scar tissue that built up on my leg and the muscle that had died and was rotting away, trapped by the heavy scarring."

Hermione claps a hand to her mouth, tears spilling over her cheeks. "Harry!"

"I'm okay," Harry reassures her. "The surgeons here are very good, there were no complications."

She nods and Molly hesitantly approaches him, as if her was a frightened animal. "Harry," Molly whispers, holding out her arms, half-expectantly, half in fear of rejection. Harry observes her for a beat, seeing no lies in her gaze and with a low cry, collapses into her arms. "It's okay baby boy, you're home now."

"He got me out of it," he whispers to Molly, clinging to her tightly. "He got me out of it."

"He got you out of what, sweetheart?" Molly asks, hugging him firmly without restricting him, recognising that her children, adoptive or not, are damaged in ways she cannot understand and perhaps never will. But that's okay because she can be there for them, she can love them and maybe, just maybe, that will be enough for them to heal and live.

"House," Harry gasps meeting Hermione's concerned gaze. "He told Elizabeth I can't work for her. I'm too hurt. I'm too broken."

Hermione staggers around the bed and embraces him tightly, crying lowly, relieved. "Oh god," she gasps. "Oh god!"

"Hermione," Harry whispers pulling her back, his expression morphing from relief to elation. "I'm free." He grins, slow but steady, splitting his face in half and baring all his teeth. "I'm FREE!"

"Harry," she laughs and she flings herself at him and then spins around and tackles Ron. "He's free! Oh Merlin and God above!" She shouts, Ron joining her and Harry in their bright, relieved laughter. "Harry you're free! Completely and utterly your own man. No more war. No more violence!" She kisses Ron firmly on the mouth and hugs Harry tightly once again. "Oh God, yes! I'm so fucking happy!"

Harry laughs loud and long, tackling Ron in a hard hug and the three war survivors ignore the bemused gazes of their family, too busy celebrating and laughing to care that they look insane. Only Molly understands because she knew of the Queen's demand and she's crying too, watching her dark haired son laugh like he hadn't for so very long and Arthur, who suspected, is smiling widely and bouncing the baby in his arms in delight. They are so very happy and it's so very brilliant to see.

"I donated money," Harry says, breathing hard and still grinning widely. He meets Molly's eyes, seeking approval from the only parental figure left to him any more. Molly who patched his bruises, made him hot milk after his nightmares. Molly who counselled him and soothed him after the dozens of deaths before and after the war. Molly who was his mother in every way that counted and who was smiling at him in the brightest pride he had ever seen. "I gave back, because I _could_. Because it was _right_. Because these people _saved_ Ron's life and mine. Because it feels _good_!"

"How much?" Bill asks, smiling with amusement and happiness, even if he doesn't understand the elation of his littlest brother and his friends.

"Five billion," Harry answers blithely, uncaring. There is a stunned silence and Hermione stares at him in shock.

"Five billion American?" She asks for clarification.

"No," Harry grins. "Galleons. _Ron's_ worth it. _I'm_ worth it. My _leg_ is worth that money. These people do good work and I'm helping save lives the only way I know how."

"That's," Hermione breathes in stunned amazement. "Amazing."

Harry nods, "they're building a new wing, they're dedicating it to us."

"Us?" Ron asks, stunned but eager. He's never had anything named after him before.

Harry nods fervently, "the Amicitia Wing."

Hermione smiles gently and radiantly at him, "the friendship wing," she translates. At Ron's curious look she continues, "it's Latin for 'friendship'."

"The most important thing in my life," Harry adds easily. "The thing that has saved me over and over, the thing I owe everything to. The donation is me giving back to the people who saved my best friends life, ensuring that they continue doing this important job in the best way possible."

"Harry," Hermione breathes, wrapping him into another tight hug, Ron doing the same from his position on the bed, barely reaching their waists. "I'm so proud of you."

Harry hums in acknowledgement, relaxing into Hermione's hug and leaning into Molly when she joins the group hug. He wouldn't return to England, he rather suspected that he'd be staying here in Princeton while continuing his various physio- and psychological therapy sessions, but right now he was happy and at peace. In the arms of his family. In knowing that he was his own person after twenty-four years of being other peoples flying butt monkey. In the realisation that life is so very special to him after all and its continuation with forever be his task and delight.

Perhaps he'd take up Agent Bodner of the FBI on his offer after all. Become a protector, not a murderer. Ensure the survival of people like him. The world was his oyster and he had no idea what he wanted to do but knows that for the next fifty years, he's completely and utterly free to choose and do as he will. It's a giddy and inspiring thought, Harry grins, smiling around at his family in pride and pleasure, he really would have to do something extra nice for House. _Refurbishing the Diagnostics department isn't nearly enough_, he thinks.

_… So It Ends._

* * *

><p><span><em>Authors Note:<em>

_So this fiction was supposed to be a one shot, but doesn't allow you to post more than 8,000 words without glitching the fuck out on you. Or at least, that's been my experience. R&R if you liked, didn't like or just need to be heard because you're oh-so-sad. _

_Regards, Sar'Kalu_


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